A/N: Started out rather sad and heavy, following 3.09, containing 3.10, might grow to include 3.11 and further…

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Please. No, please don't. This can't happen again, not now.

Cristina wasn't planning to stand in front of their bedroom door, his, for the rest of the night; but it didn't help that when her muscles woke up from a state of shock, the only movement began around her eyes, then her throat, then her chest, then the entire body—except the legs.

Stop crying. Nobody, no drug was going to sooth her.

She must stop sobbing and shaking violently before Burke kicked her out of the apartment. It's been a bad enough day for him—brought up to the sky by the Chief and brought down by her in a blink of an eye. There's no point in annoying him further with her uncontrollable crying.

That's why she never cried. Burke was wrong. It wasn't emotional shortcoming. It's emotional explosion she always feared.

She couldn't stop when she lost her baby, until Burke wrapped his arms around her and cooed her to sleep.

She couldn't stop on the day Burke was shot, until her brain was so deprived of oxygen from all the crying that she fainted in the on-call room.

She couldn't stop when she told Burke "don't ever die" until he looked deeply into her and reassured her with a kiss.

Now? There's no drug, no Burke. Nothing.

Covering her nose and mouth and biting the inside of her cheeks, Cristina muffled the noise, but not the shivering. At one point, she wanted to bang her head against the wall. She read from a magazine that head banging for an hour could use up to 150 calories. Maybe if she banged hard enough, she would exhaust herself and fall asleep.

Cristina let out a quiet laugh amidst her tears. That was ridiculous. She was not going to stain his wall like that. Hadn't she created enough mess for him, for both of them?

Cristina dragged herself behind the kitchen counter. She basically crawled. She couldn't stay on the couch. He would see her and kick her out of the house. She's dirty. There's blood in her hair. There's guilt in her heart.

She's not worth it. She would never be good enough for anything.One day she would go and thank her mother for the accurate prediction.

The kitchen floor was icy-cold and spotlessly clean. Too clean. It felt good to rest her head on it.

Tonight was not the night to think with logic. Even if she didn't understand why he was mad or why she was crying, she was too tired to think. The only thing that mattered was the secret.

Their secret. Who said what and when and why were not important anymore. They were both hurt. Stabbed. Injured.

When the vessel ruptured in front of her, that was it. She knew she had to turn herself in. It was nothing noble. She just felt compelled to.

Would it have been better if she waited till he finished? Maybe.

She wasn't mad at him when he told her to go to the other side. She wasn't mad when he rejected her help. She was confused but she was too scared to disobey.

Being a supportive girlfriend meant obeying the man she loved, doing whatever that pleased him. Right?

Then the vessel burst. She had to stop herself. She was trying to make up excuses for him, for her, for them when she ran down the hallway covered in blood. Burke probably would never believe that she was running to the Chief to defend him. She was planning to tell the Chief it was her fault because she set everything up.

Really. She really wasn't trying to break him. It just happened.

Richard caught her off-guard. A little prompting here and there and all hell broke loose. She was the worst witness of the crime, because she was so convinced that there was nothing else she could do. She begged, she pleaded, she put it upon herself. All she got was a tormented stare from the Chief. She broke the Chief as well. His trust.

Their trust. She could have trusted Burke when he said everything would be fine. She always did. Why didn't she just listen this time? He was anxious and he flexed his hand, but there was no trace of tremor. He had been saying lives with her on his side but without her help. He was fine. Why couldn't she trust her?

He was Preston Burke, an honorable man. He was only trying to save the woman's life before telling the Chief. What was she doing? Now, it wasn't only the blood on her. She stained his name, his reputation. Although he should have told the Chief before all these happened, it wasn't entirely his fault that he hadn't. The circumstances delayed him; Cristina dissuaded him.

Whatever her motives were, she was the culprit. Not just an accomplice, but the culprit. Meredith said she did the right thing. Where there was a crime, nothing could be right, could it?

It pained her when the Chief said he couldn't think of a way to punish her yet. He could have whipped her the way her step-father did. She might feel better afterwards. It pained her when Burke finally entered the office, still in his surgical scrubs. If she knew he would talk to the Chief, would she have waited? It pained her even more when Dr. Hahn came to tell her how lucky it was to study under Burke. Wasn't that ironic? It was a sincere compliment but it only pushed Cristina down another flight of stairs.

There was nowhere to go now. It's too late. This was a point of no return.

Her heart was pounding against the icy ground. No, she deserved no ground to rest on.