Author’s notes: I’d just like to say that it’s an extreme pleasure to be back with the Die for Love universe. I really did miss it.

And, now, after over a year, back to the angst!

---

Threefold

Chapter One

---

“I'm so lost
I'm barely here
I wish I could explain myself
But words escape me
It's too late
To save me
You're too late
You're too late…”

-Blink 182

-Stockholm Syndrome-

---

A bright light, a scream…

“Jesus Christ! Look at all of this blood…”

A siren, a rush of speed…

“It’s a good thing you brought her here, and just in time, too…”

Yelling, shouting, hurried footsteps… So much pain…

“I need a surgeon, stat! Dammit, this girl’s barely here.”

“What happened to her?”

“Bullet wound to the head…”

“A suicide attempt?”

“Most likely. A gun was found not far from her.”

“Jeez, why would a pretty little thing like her try to kill herself?”

“We can only wonder. Let’s hope she lives to tell the tale."

---

Pain. That was all she could feel. Horrible, agonizing, mind-numbing pain. A sensation that ensnared her entire body, feeling as if it would constrict every inch of her being into nothing. And, finally, it became too much.

Maru Matsumoto rose in her bed, a cry of utmost agony releasing itself from her lips. Tears appeared at the corners of her eyes, streaming down her pale face and moistening dried blood there. She let loose another shriek as she sat, gentle fingertips creeping up the sides of her face as they shook. They touched on bandages just next to her right temple, and then Maru knew it instantly: she was alive.

A scream tore itself from her mouth as tears continued to flow down her skin. Her body ached terribly, seeming to scream nearly as much as the spirit that it harbored. The arms and legs had begun to shake as Maru brought in her knees and buried her face there, and her head pounded as if it would soon burst.

“Dammit!” Her voice was strained and sent sharp pains through her throat, yet again proving that her entire being was suffering. A sob racked her body as the tears continued to flow. “God dammit!”

‘Why?’ she thought in utter distress, covering her face with her hands, ‘Why am I here? I did it, I know I did. I felt the trigger, the bullet, these bandages…’ Yet again, Maru wailed out. ‘Why didn’t I die…?’

Quick footsteps and the unlocking of a door shook Maru from her thoughts. Dark eyes flew to the big, grey door on the opposite side of the room, and it was then that Maru realized she had been hospitalized. The dreary white walls and grey floor felt cold and unwelcoming, only furthering the hopelessness and despair she felt.

That was when a woman walked through the door. Her auburn hair was pulled into a clip at the back of her skull, and she wore a pair of glasses with thick, black frames. Darkly painted lips were pursed together in what Maru would have assumed was thought, and she clutched the clipboard in her hands with a death grip. She was no older than thirty.

“So, you’re awake,” she spoke. Her voice was calm and collected, but baring small traces of warmth. She pulled a chair from the wall and sat, gracefully draping one slender leg over the other.

Maru glowered at the strange woman from her position in the hospital bed, pale hands clenching the white sheets, before she returned focus to her lap. ‘Obviously,’ she thought snidely, though she didn’t dare to speak the words. Her eyes continued to fill with tears, though she refused to cry in front of this stranger.

“You were brought in here by a Mr.…” She trailed off as her eyes, heavily painted with mascara and eyeliner, dropped to the papers in her hands. “Mr. Coleridge. He found you in the unfinished Trump building downtown…” Maru snorted. Which part of New York City wasn’t downtown, and which part wasn’t Donald Trump’s?

The woman returned her focus back to Maru. “You were barely alive.”

Maru’s eyes narrowed. “If I had been successful, I wouldn’t even be barely alive.” Her voice was raspy and quiet, hardly an audible whisper, and wavering with each word.

“Why did you do it?” The woman didn’t seem to realize how much it pained Maru to speak, both inside and out. She truly was an adamant seeker of knowledge, wasn’t she?

This time, Maru allowed the woman, a doctor, she realized, a glance. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Excuse me, Ms. Matsumoto, but I’m sure you have friends and a family that care about you. Taking your life is such a selfish thing to do—”

“You don’t know me,” Maru snarled out through clenched teeth. She felt the familiar prickling of tears behind her eyes, but willed them to retreat. This woman wasn’t a doctor; she was a goddamned shrink. Knowing the type, and Maru did know the type, she’d analyze every move she made and have her rotting in a cell in some nuthouse before Maru even had a chance to plea insanity.

“Well, you should at least know me.” She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “My name is Sara Hart. And you’re right, I don’t know you. But I’d like to.”

“Fuck you.” A small gasp fled from the psychiatrist’s lips at the unexpected insult, but Maru continued, “No person in their right mind would want to know me. The only thing I can bring into someone’s life is pain, and misery, and confusion.” She turned angry, moist eyes on Dr. Sara Hart, brow knotting furiously. “Who in the right fucking state of mind would want to know me?"

The analyst seemed taken aback by this remark. “Well now, I…” Her eyes dropped down to the papers in her hands yet again, before returning to Maru. “I’m sorry you feel this way, Ms. Matsumoto. But, perhaps twenty-four hours in solitary confinement might help you change you thoughts. It is customary that all attempting suicide undergo it, once they are out of critical condition.”

Maru snorted at the statement, turning her enraged and mournful eyes away from Sara. Solitary confinement for a day? It wouldn’t be a problem; she had been in solitary confinement for her entire life.

---

The walls were a drab and dreary color of paste, giving off a sense of loneliness and unwelcome. The entire room, though being padded from the floor to the ceiling, seemed hard and cold, a place that any even mildly sane creature would quickly learn to fear and hate.

Maru was thrown into the room without so much as a kind word of comfort. Her head pounded as she stumbled into the cell, anxiously rubbing her arm where it had been held it so tightly, as she turned to face the hated warden. Her eyes were narrowed angrily.

“Your twenty-four hours in solitary confinement begin now, Ms. Matsumoto,” said the cold and unfeeling voice in the doorway. “What you do in here is entirely up to you; just know that we will be watching.”

Maru snorted, rolling back the sleeves of her navy inmate shirt, as she cowered in the room like a wounded animal. “Go to hell,” she said with a wavering voice, dark eyes ablaze.

The asylum director shook his head slowly, a small snort leaving him. “Enjoy your twenty-four hours, Ms. Matsumoto.” Without another word he turned and left, closing and locking the heavy steel door behind him.

And there was one three-letter word to describe everything that Maru did during her twenty-four hours in solitary confinement:

Cry.

She sobbed, wailed, screamed into the padded walls of her room. She fell, and writhed, and pounded against the floor with quivering fists. She screamed with the throbbing agony of her head, wept openly in rage at her failure, and released tears of the distress and anguish that tore at her heart. But, most of all, she cried for him. Now that she was alone, now that she had had time to recollect and recall each event that had led up to this point, she cried for him as if she hadn’t done so in the previous weeks; as if she had only just realized his loss.

“I hate you!” Maru wailed through hot tears, fists clenched and fingernails digging into her palms. Although, she didn’t scream at Zach, not her beloved Zach. She could never hate him; he had never done anything wrong. But she…

Maru had done everything wrong. She had permanently deprived herself of the one she loved, the one she needed to live. She had taken away a kind and gentle man that had been loved by many and, as far as she had known, had never done anything to deserve his miserable fate. And, even with his death, Maru hadn’t even been able to dispose of herself properly.

The girl fell onto her side in a crumpled, pathetic heap of tears, porcelain skin, and raven hair. For the entire twenty-four hours of solitary confinement, she cried. There was not one moment that her eyes were dry, not a waking second that her sobs didn’t fill the air. After all, there was nothing else for her to do.

She might as well have been dead.

---

“Are you ready to come out now?” The taunting, insultingly childish voice of the asylum director made Maru want to shoot something. Or herself. Whichever was easiest.

But she gave no reply. Rolling onto her side, away from the door, she gave a pathetic sniff and willed her tears to stop.

No. She didn’t want to leave. As much as she hated that wretched place, she couldn’t allow herself to go. She deserved to stay there and die. For everything she had done, for all of the people she had ever hurt (or maybe just one), she deserved a slow, and miserable, and agonizing death.

“Well, take your time.” Maru’s form shuddered into a tight ball as she held herself tightly, eyes still brimmed with teardrops. She could hear a ruffling of papers behind her. “We took the liberty of calling your grandfather. He should be up here shortly.”

Maru’s heart gave a painful clench as every bit of breath seemed to leave her body. ‘Jii-san… How will he react…?’

“He’s managed to get you out of three months in the ward, under the condition that you will attend ninety hours of counseling. Do you agree to these terms?”

The broken girl paused for a moment before allowing herself to rise out of her fetal position. She turned and aimed an icy glare at the asylum director. ‘Hell no,’ she thought with a snort, nose words were on the tip of her tongue when she noticed a figure behind the warden…

Her eyes widened. “Jii-san!” she whispered out breathlessly. His shadowed look was cold and unwelcoming, eyes blank and emotionless.

“Do you agree, Ms. Matsumoto?” the asylum director pressed.

Yet again, a very rude remark was on the tip of the girl’s tongue when she noticed the look on her grandfather’s face. She gritted her teeth, eyes narrowed and spiteful. “Fine.”

“All right then.” The director took the papers and clipboard in his hands and placed them under his arm. He turned to face her grandfather. “She’s all yours, Mr. Matsumoto.” With that said, he turned and strode away, leaving Maru to stare uncomfortably at her grandfather.

There was not a word that could have been said then to ease the tension.

---

New York scenery passed by in a blur of color and sounds, both dulled by the tinted glass that Maru stared through. The girl sat in the passenger seat of her grandfather’s Mercedes Benz, arms folded tightly over her chest as she did her best to avoid eye contact with the man beside her.

The silence between them was deafening, almost painful, as they drove from the asylum. Traffic had been agreeable, and thus they were not forced to spend more than the required time by each other’s side. Maru gnawed gently on the inside of her cheek, doing her best to keep herself from saying something she’d regret.

But, what could she say? Did she dare to defend herself and her rights in attempting suicide? It was the coward’s way out, she knew, a low and dishonorable way to go out of the world. She knew her grandfather would see it that way, anyway.

“No lost life will ever be worth your own.” The soft, slow words of Japanese caught Maru off guard, and she turned bemused eyes to her grandfather. The old man stared at the road ahead with a hard expression, though his eyes were gentle. “Your actions were both foolish and rash.”

“My actions were all I had left,” the girl retorted defensively in Japanese as well, dark eyes narrowed. “And they still are.”

“You think so little of this world, Maru.” Her grandfather shook his head with an ashamed expression. “You are only a child. A selfish child.”

“Selfish?” The word came out in an angry and high-pitched tone. “I killed Zach so that he wouldn’t suffer a worse fate, so that Kobayashi would leave him in peace. Death was his only escape.” She moved pained eyes from her grandfather and back to the window. He wouldn’t see her tears.

“Hai,” her grandfather said with a nod, “But you try to atone for taking his life by taking your own? You think so much of yourself that your life could possibly make up for that of a young man’s?” He shook his head. “Selfish child.”

Maru turned enraged eyes on her grandfather. “No part of my life, not the whole of it, could make up for Zach’s loss.” By then, tears had formed in her eyes, and she no longer cared if her grandfather saw. “He was kind, and gentle, and caring, and a wonderful person. How could I ever think that losing my own life could make up for what I did?

“I didn’t try to kill myself to atone for Zach, I did it to escape this fucking hell on earth!” she cried angrily. “Perhaps I am selfish, but perhaps not. As far as I’ve seen, the only thing I can bring to the people around me is pain, and misery, and death. It would be better off if I had died.”

“Yet again, you speak like a child.” The demeaning tone of the old man’s voice only fueled Maru’s rage. “Do you truly believe that your existence is what brought such pain into your mother and father’s lives? Into this Zach’s?” He shook his head once again. “You give yourself far too much credit.”

Then it was enough. Maru had had enough of her grandfather’s patronizing words, of the way he spoke to her like one of his martial art students. She could no longer share these small quarters with him in peace. She had to get out. It was a primal need.

In a brazen and rash act, Maru through her door open as the car moved. She tossed herself out and hit the ground at a shaky run before turning to slam the door closed. The girl never failed to notice the peaceful and disinterested look on her grandfather’s face.

‘Fuck you,’ she screamed silently, turning her back. ‘I don’t need you. I don’t need this.’

Maru turned and shot off at a run, diving through the crowded streets of Manhattan as the wound in her head pounded. She pushed through the masses without apology and without pause, flying aimlessly with her head down. This time, in all honesty, she didn’t care where she ended up.