A New Life

Note: There's something of a jump at the end of Heavy Rain leading up to some of the epilogues. I think there was a span of time between the Warehouse confrontation and when Ethan, Madison and Shaun all get a new place and move in together that we never get to see. I wanted to flesh out the circumstances which led up to it, using both events that happened in the game and from my own imagining of what took place right afterwards. This will be a Madison-centric story, based on how my playthrough of events in the game went down.

Chapter 1

Three days after finding Shaun, she was in a cab and headed home from the hospital.

Her shoulder ached where they'd sewn her up after pulling out a bullet and her leg had a nasty enough sprain to warrant placing on a (rather annoying) cast for the next couple of weeks, but she'd been ushered out rather unceremoniously after that with a pair of crutches and a hastily printed discharge note telling her to do pretty much what she already knew. She couldn't entirely blame them for their abrupt treatment, of course…she imagined she'd been quite a thorn in everyone's side, trying to stay informed about Ethan and Shaun's conditions while they consistently refused to tell her anything.

'They probably just thought I was some nosy journalist in the wrong place at the wrong time' she thought, with a mental sigh 'and who's to say they're wrong?'

After some adept eavesdropping and schedule watching, she had managed to overhear the number to Ethan's room and waited for a shift change to make a break for it and take a trip to see him. Seeing that his door was open, she had wheeled up her wheelchair to look inside and then paused just outside the door's threshold. Shaun was gaunt-looking and pale with an IV hooked to his arm, but seemed to be sitting comfortably in one of the two chairs she could see. In the other chair was his mother, Grace Mars. Their quiet chatting and occasional furtive glances towards the bed indicated that Ethan was probably sleeping, although she could not see him from where she was. Something in her chest had twisted painfully at the thought of all of them together and she had quietly turned around and rolled away before being seen by the room's occupants. The irritated nurse at her empty bedside when she'd returned to her room certainly didn't help things, but her swimming head and aching heart took all the fight out of her and she'd submitted to the subsequent lecture with meek nods and silence.

Now, as the cab rounded the corner heading to her apartment building and rolled to a stop in front, she breathed a sigh of relief as she spotted her motorcycle parked along the street. "Hmmm…I hadn't even thought of that. I guess Sam must have picked it up for me. I sure hope he didn't stick around, though." she muttered. She liked Sam, but he'd been gruff and overbearing when he brought her overnight bag by her hospital room before and she wasn't in the mood to deal with any hovering at the moment. Slinging the bag over her shoulder, she paid the cab driver and grabbing her crutches, managed to wriggle out of the back seat and make it to a standing position. She shut the car door and then turned around to hobble into her building as the cab drove away. The light rain falling wasn't enough to make the short trek inside particularly difficult, but it did further dampen her mood…she was so tired of rain.

A cringe-inducing amount of mail from the mailbox and a tedious elevator ride later and she was unlocking her apartment door, lightly nudging it shut with her good foot as she locked the door behind her. She slowly made her way down to her big table in the kitchen and unceremoniously dumped her armful of mail in a scattered heap and her bag on the floor, then sat down into one chair while using another to prop up her cast-covered leg as she leaned her crutches against the wooden surface. She sorted the mail into various to-do piles (bills, magazines, junk…) and decided that going online to pay the bills could wait until tomorrow. With a grunt, she stood and used her crutches to make it over to the kitchen counter. "I'll have to do something about food eventually, but at least there's always delivery." she sighed, peeking into her mostly-bare fridge. Fortunately there was still plenty of tea in the cupboard and she made herself a hot cup, carefully carrying it over to her couch and setting in on one of her small coffee tables before sitting down on the couch and settling her leg on another table next to it. She lay her crutches on the floor beside the couch, grumbling at what a production every little action was going to be for the time being.

She let her head fall back against the couch cushions with a huffed exhalation of breath and pondered for the umpteenth time whether she'd done the right thing by leaving the hospital without so much as a note to Ethan. She'd had a bit of time to reflect on things lying in that hospital bed and in truth, she was scared of how easily she'd let her guard down with him. Even when she'd first met him, something about Ethan had drawn her in and pulled her close. She was shocked at how quickly they'd gone from strangers to friends to lovers and had no idea exactly how it had happened, aside from the instant (though unacknowledged) heat that had sparked between them as soon as their eyes met that only grew hotter over the course of their brief time together. Even now, knowing she should know better, part of her longed to be by his side again. An even bigger part of her was afraid to face him at all, afraid that he'd think she had taken advantage of him in a vulnerable state. The thought had occurred to her several times over the last few days, making her call herself every curse word in the book and *then* some in her self-loathing and anger. She'd seen the tears on his face and the emptiness in his dead blue eyes and simply acted on instinct, offering everything she had to give to bring him back from whatever terrible place he'd been in at the time…but now she feared she'd made a terrible mistake in doing so.

'Silly, lovesick fool…what the hell are you doing, mooning over him like this?' she bitterly chastised herself. If she'd had her shit together and done her job right, she would have realized from the start that he was still technically a married man and newly separated instead of hearing it on a news expose after the fact (much to her chagrin) and maybe she would have thought twice before sleeping with him and complicating everything. She honestly had no idea what he'd want to do with his life once he and Shaun recovered from their trauma, now that he was free from the guilt of thinking he was a murderer. 'For all I know, he may want to try and reconcile with his wife.' she thought as she picked up her cup of tea and took a sip, frowning slightly. 'If that's what he wants to do, then I can't get in the way of it…'

She was pretty sure this state of limbo she now found herself in, torn between not wanting to let Ethan go and wanting to do the right thing by him and his son, couldn't be good for her mental health in the long run. 'At least it wasn't that great to begin with, so I'm not losing much' she thought ruefully. The physical scars always healed readily enough, but the mental scars from the things she'd seen and been through…they never went anywhere.

Finishing her tea, she grabbed her crutches and rose to put the cup in the sink, then moved to lean against the table so that she could stoop and rummage through her overnight bag for the prescriptions she had been given to take. She picked up the nondescript brown bottles and then made her way to the bathroom to prepare for bed. Carefully stripping out of her loose clothing, she put on a soft silk robe and took both a pain pill and a sleeping pill, washing them down with tap water as she peered at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. "At least insomnia won't be an issue with the hospital-grade stuff" she murmured, glad that she had a way to temporarily cope with the lack of sleep that might have otherwise resulted from being marooned in her own apartment for the time being.

She finished up her evening routine and hobbled out of the bathroom, flicking off the light and making her way to bed. She set her crutches to rest against the glass paneling next to her headboard and then leaned on the headboard to slowly lower herself down, carefully arranging herself onto her back and using an extra pillow to slightly elevate her leg. Staring up at the ceiling of the dark bedroom, she waited for sleep to claim her as rain pattered against the windows and blurred the city lights beyond them.