Couldn't do a word of this without my beta Frannie and my prereaders. NOT. A. WORD.

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Masen

At what point does the feeling of helplessness transform into bitterness?

Victoria isn't sure, but she recognizes the foreboding that brews stronger in her heart with each passing hour.

She doesn't like thinking this way, but she accepts that it comes with the territory of suffering trauma.

She's felt every emotion under the sun in too short a time.

As she sits next to Masen, a vacant stare on her face as his chest soundlessly rises and falls; she acknowledges that this is exactly what has happened to her.

It's been a tumultuous few weeks, and Victoria feels like each event has blurred into the next: Emmett's death. The funeral. Masen's accident. Masen's coma.

She doesn't know how much more she can withstand.

Blinking herself back to the present, she moves her gaze from the window. Staring at the man lying in the hospital bed next to where she sits in an uncomfortable, stiff hospital chair, she wonders why she bothered to look at all.

Nothing has changed.

His vitals remain the same, as does his brain activity. The only thing healing in the bed in front of her are the broken bones salvaged with metal screws and uncomfortable plates – he will set off metal detectors everywhere he goes, that's for sure.

… Once he's better.

And he will get better, Victoria is sure of it.

She knows Masen.

She knows his life of inner turmoil and how he's been uncomfortable in his own skin for most of it. She also knows how he chooses to cope when it threatens to consume him.

He was an addict, even though most days he would never admit to it, and Victoria had noticed the tremors in his hands within a week of them meeting.

"It's nothing," Masen had said, blowing off her concerns with the smirk that had led her to his bed for the first time that very night. "Watch."

And as always, she listened to him, watching as the tremors disappeared with each swallow from the bottle.

He was one of those functioning addicts, the kind who manage to abstain during the day. Eventually, biological dependence starts to rear its ugly head towards the end of working hours. He was friendly; he was smart, good looking to the point it seemed unnatural at times. He was –

Was?

Is!

Victoria chastises herself, bringing a hand to her forehead in frustration for even thinking these kinds of thoughts. It had only been two weeks – admittedly two of the longest weeks of her life. Even though the doctors had assured them all that he should eventually wake up, given the brain activitythey had been monitoring throughout his stay here at the hospital, she still has moments when she forgets he's still here.

Looking over at him, she wonders how much of him is actually here in the room with her.

She wonders where he might be.

Emmett took a piece of Masen with him when he had left this earth, and it hadn't even been a week before Masen had self-destructed without his twin. Five days – five days – was all it took before Masen caved inwards, back into the dark place where he couldn't find himself.

"He's my brother; I love him," Masen had told Victoria the first time he had taken her home to meet his family. It was obvious that the two brothers loved each other; they orbited exactly opposite of each other around the room as if looking at one of those distorted mirrors where it's hard to tell the direction in which any given object moves. They didn't speak much, and Masen had told her that sometimes they didn't have to hold a conversation to understand what the other was feeling, but Victoria could sense it.

She could sense their closeness, could sense how intense their relationship was, and was instantly reminded of how smothered Masen had felt at times because of it.

"You know those thoughts?" Masen had whispered in the dark one night after they had spent an evening with Emmett and Rose at their house. His fingers ran the course of her spine, down and up again to gently circle around a curl of her rich red hair. She tingled at his touch, inching closer towards him involuntarily. "Everyone has them. The kind you keep to yourself – not because they're bad or embarrassing or anything like that; just private thoughts you prefer to keep quiet?"

Victoria nodded against him, pressing her face further into his chest. "Yeah, baby. Of course."

She felt Masen shrug against the sheets.

"He doesn't do it on purpose. He just knows. The same way I know everything about him. It can drive you crazy sometimes."

"I can't imagine."

She couldn't then, and she still can't now.

Especially now that one brother is gone, entirely too soon, and the other brother walks that line between here and….not here.

She can't bring herself to say the words that tell just how close he had been to leaving her and the rest of this world behind.

"Can you hear me, Masen?"

She doesn't like to talk to him. Not in here. Her voice echoes throughout the somber room, and even though his family gives her the privacy she wants, she still feels on display. Maybe it's because of the floor they're on; it's so quiet. The only sounds are whispered prayers among family members and the beeping of machines to keep everyone informed of changes in vitals. Maybe it's because she knows he won't answer her.

Yet.

"I know you will," Victoria says out loud, reaching for his hand and holding it gently with one of her own, careful to avoid the cuts and bruises he suffered in the accident. "You'll answer me soon."

Maybe it's because she's always been impatient her whole life that she goes from feeling sad to lonely to angry so quickly. Sometimes her moods change from one hour to the next. And even though everyone around her tells her it's completely normal to feel like she's suffering from whiplash, Victoria wishes she could pick an emotion and stick with it.

Today, she doesn't feel like her emotion is going to change.

She's pretty sure she knows she'll be feeling this way until she sleeps it off tonight, that is, if sleep doesn't manage to evade her once again.

She prays each night that she'll wake the next morning to a new life, like a computer rebooting to fix past mistakes.

Instead, she wakes up to realize that the nightmare from the day before is real and is worse than the nightmare she had hoped it would be.

It's her reality.

And her reality is stark and unsettling: her boyfriend of a year had gotten drunk and knowingly went behind the wheel of a car, nearly killing himself in the process. His life hangs in the balance; doctors aren't sure he'll make a full recovery once he does choose to wake up.

She wonders if Masen will care about the state of his life once he remembers that Emmett is, and will always be, gone.

Victoria can feel the bitter taste fill her mouth as she stares at Masen's sleeping face.

She already knows how he'll choose to cope.

Alcohol had been his form of escape since he was fifteen when he realized firsthand how easy it had been to forget about his worries – three sips were all it took for him to feel free.

… Like a person.

… Not a twin.

Just one single person with simple, private, and unshared thoughts.

"Another," he slurred at his friend as they leaned their backs against the cement wall of the baseball dugouts by the school. He stretched his hand lazily towards the bottle they were slugging, the orange sun in the background reflecting against the liquid in the clear bottle. Masen squinted against the intruding light, moving his head slightly in the other direction so he could see better.

"You sure?" His friend answered back, letting out a belch into the empty baseball field in front of them. They used to play Little League here. Back then, they were stuffing their faces with that baseball gum, Little Chew or whatever the fuck it was, and now they were passing a bottle of vodka back and forth like the world was out to get them.

They had been going at it for a while, each of them becoming more incoherent with each swig, and his friend was starting to feel the ramifications.

Masen, however, hadn't reached that point yet.

"Fuck yeah," he urged, pointing towards the bottle his friend still held.

His friend laughed and shook his head.

"Your mom is going to beat the shit outta you," he laughed harder, bringing the bottle to his own lips again. "I can smell you all the way over here."

Masen answered his friend with a punch in the stomach, the alcohol spurting out of his friend's mouth like a waterfall.

"Yeah, well, you're not much better yourself." He answered once they stopped laughing. He motioned towards the bottle again. "Come on."

"All right. Take it easy, though; we still gotta get home."

"Can you get in trouble for drinking and driving on a bike?"

"You wanna find out?"

Masen shook his head. "Fuck that."

They finished the bottle, no rush to head home as the sun disappeared beneath the black velvet sky. Their breath left their mouths in warm swirls of steam, and Masen watched the world above him pass him by as he lay on his back.

"You hear that?" Masen asked when he felt his lids grow heavy.

"No?"

Masen sighed into the night. "Exactly."

-m-

Victoria knows what awaits him. What awaits her.

She knows that as much as Masen hated being a twin, he is going to hate not being a twin even more.

She thinks of the bottles he has hidden from her and the drugs he stuffed between cracks in his garage.

"I do 'em recreationally," Masen had shrugged her off, pulling her in for a kiss to sway her mind in the other direction. "Every now and then, you know? Nothing I couldn't stop any time I wanted to."

It was so, so easy to believe him.

Always has been.

He's so simple. He doesn't play games like other people she knows – he says what's on his mind and doesn't like to waste his own time on people or situations that can piss him off. He doesn't lead anyone on – why would he choose to drag something out when it would be so much simpler to just sever all ties and move forward without?

That was – is – his philosophy, and every time, she believes him. When he says he could stop, why wouldn't she believe him? Masen doesn't bother to spend his time on anything that could be harmful to his precious time. If he says there's no habit for him to kick in the first place, she trusts his word.

Stupid girl, really.

Those were the words she told herself when she had hit her rock bottom in the relationship.

Stupid girl to believe him time and time again.

But that's what happens to the significant other of an addict. She believed in the man he shows to the people, even though he really was the man who lurked in the shadows and preferred it that way.

She should have known he would have the spare set of keys to his car that night.

The truth is that she tried. She had been by Masen's side throughout Emmett's entire treatment plan, watched as the once bear of a man had dwindled in size down to someone almost unrecognizable. And it happened so quickly – all of them thought they had more time.

Especially Masen.

"I don't understand it," Masen had said, pacing a hole into the carpet of his apartment. Stalking into the kitchen, he angrily reached for the bottle on the island in the center of the room. He took a large gulp, and Victoria tried to silence the part of her that always worried about him with each sip. The glass bottle slammed noisily onto the marble countertop. Masen turned his piercing gaze onto her, and what she saw flashing in her eyes was the closest she had ever come to seeing him lose his sense of self. He was acting like a different person. The person whose identity he had fought so hard to maintain and sculpt since he was a kid was lost as he tried to understand his twin brother. "He was responding. The treatment was working. The trial in New York?"

Another sip to soothe his breaking heart.

"Yeah?" Victoria questioned, aware of what he was referring to.

Shaking his head in disbelief, Masen continued. "He qualified. His labs and scans showed he did. I don't get it," he complained, leaning against the counter in the kitchen near the sink.

Emmett's latest scans had proven that not only was he not responding to any of the chemo or radiation protocols his doctors had approved, but the tumors were also spreading. It happened too fast and too soon, which meant that at the last minute, his approval in the trial in New York had been revoked. Victoria's face had softened at the helplessness in Masen's voice.

Walking over to where he stood, she snuggled against his chest and wrapped her arms around his waist, squeezing him as tight as she could as if it could take it all away.

"They told you it was aggressive," she whispered against his heart. She knew her words would be futile; Masen would never be satisfied at just taking a doctor's word for it. Shaking his head, he moved towards his workbag that held a manilla folder with crisp white papers inside. Taking it out, he plopped it onto the counter with a sound that echoed throughout the stillness of the room.

"I found something else earlier today. A group of doctors in Germany that would be willing to look at Em's case."

"You think it's promising?" Victoria asked, reaching over to look over at the papers she probably wouldn't understand. She'd try, for Masen's sake.

Masen nodded vigorously, unable to hide the hope behind his eyes. "There's a chance."

"Did you tell Emmett?" She asked and watched as his body visibly fell. He folded the top half of his body on top of the island, collapsing in a heap of despair. The legs he stood on were shaky at best, and Victoria didn't need to ask but asked anyway, prepared to hear the worst. "And?"

For the first time, a sob escaped from his lungs, and he was too slow to stop it. Or maybe, like Emmett, he had taken all he was able to.

"He's done, Vic." He cried, sniffling into his arms. "He's done."

And instead of reaching for her, he sought the sting of the clear liquid inside of the bottle.

This continued until the sun threatened to peek between his blinds in the living room. She stayed up with him for as long as she could, knowing she would be no match whatsoever to what he snorted up his nose every time he went to the bathroom while the water was running.

"You remember the story about this scar?"

They had made themselves comfortable on his couch in the living room, slipping their clothes off tiredly at each passing hour. Victoria was running her fingers up and down a four-inch scar on Masen's bended knee.

She nodded against his shoulder, unable to hide the exhaustion in her voice. She had to work in a few hours but still stayed up for him. "You fell on Halloween. Chasing Emmett down the street, right?"

Masen laughed into the early dawn. "Yeah, tripped over an uneven part of the sidewalk. Ironic because I landed on a metal stake that one of the pavers had left behind. They were fixing that very sidewalk for the same reason I fell, but they hadn't finished the job, I guess."

Emmett had a unique ability to tell a story, and Victoria remembered his telling of the incident fondly.

The silence that echoed throughout the room was haunting, almost as if she could feel his heart begin to accept the fact that his brother was really going to leave him. He was going to have to rely on pure memory to keep his brother alive since Emmett had made sure that was his family's only option.

"Em was the only one that came back for me. The rest of 'em kept running to that big house on the block, the one that always gave out the King size candy bars each year."

"I know." Victoria felt useless repeating the same thing over and over, but she was there for Masen, and that was all that mattered to her. She hoped it mattered to him.

"Not him." Masen shook his head. "He wasn't even mad that we had to stop Trick-or-Treating to go to the hospital for me to get stitches. He even ended up giving me all of his candy to make me feel better."

"Did it?" Victoria questioned. "Make you feel better?"

"He always knew how to make me feel better." She held him as another round of sobs took over his body. "So why won't he let me do it for him this time?"

"Is this your doing, Em?" Victoria questions now as the sun sets outside of Masen's hospital room. "Is this your way of helping him heal?"

Emmett would never sit by and let Masen suffer. Perhaps Emmett has something to do with why Masen has yet to wake up. Maybe Emmett has made a deal with the Big Man to let Masen's body heal while his brain finally gets the rest it so desperately needs.

The bitterness in her grief becomes front and center before she can stifle it. Why does he get to rest?

They had only been together for a year, and he had taken and taken and taken from her spirit month after month. The manipulation an addict can pull on a person is directly related to the amount the other person feels for the addict – and Masen had used that against Victoria. Not in a mean way; not in a way that was purposeful – it was just really easy for him to get his way because he knew how much she loved him.

It was true. She had loved him from the very beginning and held back on saying it in fear it would spook him – a man that preferred isolation would surely not be welcoming of those words as early as she had felt them.

My God, had she felt them. Felt them to the very fiber of her being.

She fell for him, not just for the hair that drove all the women wild and the voice that screamed of confidence and self-assuredness.

She fell for the insecurities, the moments of self-doubt that he only let her witness when his guard was fully and truthfully down.

She fell for his family. His life.

Him.

… All of him, even the parts of him that lived in the shadows.

She thought of herself as the muse that would pull him out.

But now, as he wastes away in the bed next to her, a shell of the man he was and a lifetime away from the man he wishes to be, she wonders if she'll ever be that person.

"Our life wasn't so bad, right?" She sniffs through her tears, leaning down to rest her head on his shoulder. His hair is shaved from the surgery he had to relieve pressure off his skull. It used to be long enough for some strands to reach the top of her head when she placed it on his shoulder. They used to laugh about the way their hair colors looked when mixed together.

She hopes he can hear the words she's saying, hopes the words she says paints a picture of the beautiful life they can have if only he learns how to prevent events like these in the first place.

Victoria hopes this will be the lesson he needs to change his life. His rock bottom. His amazing and once-vibrant brother's dying wish to Masen had been to lead a happy life, and Masen's subsequent abhorrible choice to drive while intoxicated is the exact opposite of what Emmett would have wanted.

"Come back to me, Masen." She places a shaky kiss against his cheek. She closes her eyes as she pictures the sober life she wants for the two of them. "We have a life here. Together. I can't live our life without you."

She stays that way until she hears a pair of footsteps enter the room.

Masen's father.

"Victoria, let him rest."

And again, the bitterness creeps in, erasing her thoughts of how much she misses him.

Why?

Why does he deserve the rest and not me?

Hmm, so Victoria, huh? Not gonna lie, I like her a lot. She's fun to write.

Your reviews and theories give me LIFE! Send 'em my way.

Mary and Masen's stories are almost caught up to where we first met them in Chapters 1 and 2: Mary on her cliff with the borrowed pills and Masen's car accident the night of Emmett's funeral. They still have more to say and I can't wait to share it with you all.

Starting on 2/1, I'll be posting a story I'm writing with Jgaff, Collisions with Clouds. Follow our author page, JM Jill, for the updates!

Join my facebook group, Lily Jill Fics, for upcoming news and teasers!