THIS DOES NOT HAVE A HAPPY ENDING

okay so this is some of the angstiest shit I've ever written (besides the pieces of Toby and Happy's individual deaths). I am hoping to make someone cry (starting off 2018 right ha). I am very proud of this piece, though, so any sort of review would light up my day.

this is for the lovely Leah. thank you so much for the request(s)! I hope this story has the effect that you wanted it to. and I hope you enjoy.

Their bodies fit together like pieces of a puzzle. A pattern untouched, and undiscovered for years, but one bright enough to light the night sky once ignited. Soulmates entwined with true love. Broken bits mended to be one. Infinite flames drowned in each other for eternity.

But eternity was only a word. Only a phrase. Only an idea. Eternity needed uninterrupted time to demonstrate the extent of its power.

Nobody ever had a true forever.

And one was the point of only a half?

Toby peeped an eye open. Sunlight seeped through the open window, sculpting shadows across the corners of the bedroom. The mood lacked its bright presence. Gloomy, hollow, and lonely, like it had been for days. For weeks. An infinity whose reign would never end, stretching the misery minute after minute after minute. "Mornin', Hap."

Happy frowned at him from her side of the bed. He opened his lids entirely and focused on her. She was disappointed. "C'mon, doc," she chastised, "not again."

Toby groaned sleepily, rolling his head against the pillow. "How'd you sleep, love?" he asked while deliberately ignoring her comment.

"We've talked about this. I thought you were calling it quits."

"Does your refusal to respond mean you got a neck cramp or something?" he murmured. He reached to touch her face, but grazed the pillow instead.

She attempted a sigh. It didn't emerge. "This isn't good for you."

"What, morning marital chatter?"

"Bullshitting."

His core shook like shock from a brutal earthquake attack.

Damn it. He wanted just a small taste of normal to silence his sobbing taste buds. He just wanted her. He couldn't do this.

Eyes suddenly stinging, Toby swallowed. He glanced towards the wedding ring on her finger, which didn't glisten off the early sun. Then he frowned at the actual ring, sitting lonely with its cruel tendencies to taunt on the nightstand. A car magazine rested on the right, fresh from the plastic packaging. She'd been especially excited about that one.

She'd never gotten to read it.

Wanting to push himself up, he moved his hand along the comforter. Something cotton grazed his fingertips. Realization as to what it was immediately followed, bursting his heart all over again in a swift second. The shirt she stole from him and wore to sleep any night there wasn't enough intense and intimate passion for removal. It still retained her gloriously perfect scent. If only it'd actually been a blade of some kind, one to slice his fingers and provide a distraction. It would've been less painful.

A tear rolled down his cheek before he knew it'd fallen.

"You can't keep doing this," she said softly, like a knife digging into a scab he didn't stop picking at.

His chest rung with bells singing tales of his pain as his breathing fell to a bare minimum beat. Only what he needed, which still felt like nothing at all.

A gunshot blared in the back of his head, louder than the identical enduring tune swallowing up his thoughts and lingering in his head for days on end.

"I can't live without you, Happy," Toby answered matter-of-factly, tone bland but intensely raw.

He imagined her hands giving his a squeeze.

But, instead, his skin froze in its exposed loneliness.

"Yes you can."

"No," he breathed, "I can't."

She leaned closer. The bed didn't move under her shift in weight. It remained motionless. "The fact that I'm even saying this means you can. And you know it."

"You just like to argue with me," he deflected.

"I don't say things that aren't facts," she responded. Her voice slowed. "Besides, I couldn't if you weren't thinking it."

Toby flicked his fingers, as if that would brush off her statement's conclusion. "No-I know."

Happy pressed her lips together. "Do you?"

Impulsively, he reached for his ring. He held on tight. "I know, Happy," his voice cracked and he looked away. "But I can't let you go."

"I'm just part of your subconscious."

It hurt to hear.

He knew. It still hurt every time he saw her. It hurt because he still hurt. It hurt to hear. It hurt to think.

He knew it wasn't smart. He knew it would leave him stinging after each goodbye, and wrecked whenever she came to mind. But he couldn't let go. She was his air and his purpose for living and his entire universe and the pulse that made his heart go and the better half to his whole.

Seeing her was worth suffocating in the pain.

"I don't know how to get my ass out of bed," Toby whimpered. "I don't know right from left anymore because the only direction I ever cared about was the one heading to you. I can't breathe, I can't eat, I can barely sleep-"

"That's why you have to let me go."

He shook his head violently. "No, no. I need you here. I can't lose you for good."

"If you want to get past this-"

"I'll never get past this."

"-you can't keep hallucinating me. You gotta learn to live without me."

"You're the only reason I have to live."

"You can find other reasons. Just go look."

He swallowed hard. "Happy Quinn," he wiped a tear from his cheek, "a day without you in it is not a day worth living."

"I'm already gone. Buried in a cemetery five miles down the road."

He scrubbed his face vigourously with the back of his hand. "Don't say that, Happy. Please, please don't say that."

"Please let me go, Toby."

"No, no, no," he jerked his body upright, "I can't live without you. Don't go. Please. Please don't leave."

Tears fluttered under her eyes. "I love you. Which is why I need you to do this."

"Happy-"

"For your own good. Sitting here, talking to someone who's only in your head and pretending I'm still alive is making you more miserable."

Toby extended his hand towards her face. It fell, swiping at the empty air. He started bawling, and her eyes twinkled back with a sad sensitiveness that cut right through his chest. "Please."

She did her best reassuring smile.

And then her ghost disappeared, her floating figure, molded from the pain plaguing every single second of every single minute of every single day since her death. Damn his fucking head.

The trained psychiatrist hadn't whispered a single syllable of wisdom in weeks. He kept quiet and let the grief play its mind tricks. The game went on, forcing its only participant to suffer lack of touch, and the same heart wrenching goodbye he never noticed was slowly killing him.

And again, he was alone, not even safe in the comfort of his own home.

Staying in the company of his demons, but without his angel.