A/N: Someone said they missed some of the angst lately and this has been brewing in my head for a while. Also, depending on next week's travel plans, this may be the last thing I write until the New Year. If so, have a good one!

Very serious warning for themes of suicide, graphic scenes, depictions of suicide attempts. Do what makes you safe, friends.

When Andy walks into the apartment proper, he half-expects April to be blasting strange Russian chanting but instead there's a total silence that he likes too. It's something comfortable and serene with the blaring traffic outside, the ruckus of the bar at a bustle beneath them, and his own quiet breaths in the midst of everything else. He can see April lying in bed, eyes closed, and he smiles to himself. She's on her back with the covers wrapped all over her, breathing very softly with the rise of the sheets, and Andy wonders what he did to deserve this.

Walking over to the tiny kitchen, Andy sets down the grocery bag and pours himself a glass of water where he downs it in a gulp. Andy just wants to take in the apartment, the chipped and yellowing paint on the walls and the dangling fixtures on the ceiling, and be happy for it all. From the tiny range that barely works, a broken sink that only spouts half-cocked jets of water, and the fridge that only has a six pack and orange juice in it to the bad carpeting that's ripping up in thirty or forty places. They don't even have a bathroom door, only a bit of plastic that hangs down and sort of hides everything.

Walking over to the bed, the double that he barely fits on, Andy's smile falters a little when he sees how strangely pale April is. Along with that, her brow is in a permanent crease and constantly agitated not to mention the strangely red circles around her eyes and nose. Shrugging to himself, Andy intends to pull aside the covers and slip beside her when his eyes nearly bulge out of his head.

"April," Andy murmurs, scared, and his fingers run shakily to her hands. "April?"

Where there had been unmarred skin for a year or more, harsh gashes ran down from her palm to the middle of her forearm. Blood was flowing openly onto the sheets, staining in small pools where her arms sat limply. Both of them had similarly long, ugly cuts in vertical streaks, and April's pallor becomes terrifying. Andy tries to gingerly wake her, but only blurrily half-open eyes and mumbles meet him in response. Suddenly the small apartment that felt amazing and perfect is cramped and frightening - every inch of it drenched in April's blood.

In reality the sheets were only partially soaked in brown stains, but to Andy they were seeping through everything in the walls and into his clothes. His head spun trying to figure out what the hell he was supposed to do there. Still shaking and his voice emitting perpetual whines, Andy touched her hair and brushes aside a bit of her bangs in desperate hope he's hallucinating this. But she's still bleeding and he's still just sitting there - doing nothing.

"April, babe, wake up," Andy whines, grabbing her shoulders.

"Who..." she mumbles, but doesn't say anything more.

Andy picks her up in one motion, her weight nothing in that moment, and puts her over his shoulder. Bolting out of the bar, someone asks him if they're okay but Andy doesn't notice. He's already punching in an emergency call and rushing himself to the nearest hospital. All the commotion doesn't give him time to realize he's crying to himself and stroking her hair intermittently in the car. April's head lolls in the passenger side, the seat belt barely keeping her up, and he can't stop the tears.

He had only been gone for about twenty minutes, and before when April had that same sad smile on her face he assumed they would talk about it afterwards. Thankfully, according to some lady who doesn't look nearly as worried as she should be, it was a good thing he got there in time. She explains to him how awful the scars are going to be, how quickly she was losing blood, and why the vertical cuts were insanely dangerous.

Andy doesn't stop crying for an hour, trying to figure out what's going on.

They really are ugly, April decides. One of the scars lies like a snake with no real goal on her left arm, eventually splitting off into two separate lines and ending on her palm, while the other is a mostly straight line with a swirl where her fingers slipped on her forearm. April's color doesn't come back for a few hours afterwards and when the cuts close up she doesn't say a word about it to Andy. She can see it in his eyes, how he distrusts her now, and it's not making things better.

It all had come back in a rush that night, like a wail approaching her until it was fully in her face and crying for attention. At the moment, Andy was downstairs working, and in some way she felt selfish for what she was doing. Testing the fixture in the ceiling with a pull of her arm, April doesn't see any other way. Some part of her hates that he'll have to find her, but another is too caught up in the senseless relapse to really notice anything else - nothing makes sense anyways.

So she takes one of his belts. Wraps it around her fist until she's found one that'll keep her at least above the floor. April hangs it on the fixture neatly, then fits the loop around her neck. It's tight, snug, and honestly she hopes that it'll make it quicker. She's heard that breaking your neck is more common than strangling yourself.

Maybe that'll be it. Her vision does blur for a second, all red and squinty with blood pulsing in her head, as her feet dangle and struggle to meet the carpet. In that second none of it seems right, but at the same time none of it has to make sense to her. To April, this is how it all should have ended years ago before Andy.

"Hey April, I just forgot my stuff," the door to the apartment opens and Andy's voice makes its way to her ears before he shouts incoherently.

She remembers him struggling with the incredibly tight loop around her neck and wondering if he'll even be able to save her this time. She doesn't know if she wants him to. He'd only be saving April from herself for a moment, and then the thoughts would return. She doesn't get the time to think anymore on the matter because she passes out not long after.

April sits back on the bed, her breaths weak as Andy undoes the belt buckle digging into her throat. His own hand is bleeding profusely all over her but Andy's eyes are scattershot in their sight, not noticing anything in its entirety save for her. He couldn't get the belt off of her when she was hanging - oh God, she was hanging - so Andy did the only thing he could think of and pulled the entire metal fixture out of the ceiling in a fit of desperate strength. It cut his hand all over and left a gaping hole in the roof, but that didn't matter to him.

The only thing that mattered was April's dull thud as she fell into his arms afterwards and how scared he was when she didn't respond. Eventually she does choke out a cough and return to relatively normal, albeit stuttery, breaths as her eyes flutter open.

"April, hey? Hey, hey!" Andy's words fall out of his mouth before he leans down and kisses her forehead, her cheek, her lips in succession. "Hey, you there? April?"

"Wh-Why did you stop me?" she hacks for a second.

"Because you were trying to kill yourself," Andy says hurriedly as if he doesn't want to say the words at all.

"You never listen to me, do you?" April asks, holding her head and swaying as she blinks herself back into reality. "You never fucking listen."

"What?" Andy's speechless, because that's the only thing he knows how to do.

"You can't make decisions for me, that's what I told you... and you; you stopped me," she sighs, feeling around on the bruises on her neck. "You stopped me, why did you stop me?"

"Because... I love you, April. Why would I let you do that?" Andy's own breaths feel like they're constricted by a noose.

"You'd let me get away from all of this if you loved me," she squeaks, rubbing the disgusting lumps of flesh on her arms.

Andy quiets because he doesn't have an answer for that. He doesn't know what to say to her then, what will make her better. In some way, he knows that's impossible. He's always known, but he's never had to take his girlfriend out of a loop around her neck. He's never had to rush her away from a blood-soaked bed and keep her wounds closed with his bare hands. Andy's never had to look down at his hands and see her blood on them, fingers shaking as he wonders why he can't do anything.

Why he's helpless to watch her do this. It's not about him, he knows that, but who's really the powerless one?

"I-I know, and I'm selfish because of that," Andy admits in a hoarse whisper. "I'm sorry."

"You're not selfish," April immediately fires back, despite the contradiction.

"But you-"

"It's not supposed to make sense Andy," she explains as she sits up and stays far away from him on the bed. "None of it makes sense."

"Will it ever?" he asks, hopeful.

"No," April answers bluntly.

Andy doesn't like leaving her alone for very long anymore. Both of them are annoyed by it, and soon he lets his guard down because it's overbearing and he hates seeing her mad at him. The problem is that he never knows when he'll come home to April in sweats and staring at a laptop or April in a pool of vomit and over-the-counter nightmare cocktails. Thankfully it's never the latter, and it isn't for two years.

And then he goes home, and she's silent in bed. Andy walks over, solemn. Her eyes are shut in sweet peace, maybe like she's always wanted, and Andy pulls back the covers to let himself in. There's no cuts, and there's no pills, and he nestles against her quietly without any hope left in his system. He just needs her body heat, her slow breaths that he can still feel, and the way her fingers move through his even in sleep.

It's a beautiful thing when she opens her eyes and smiles at him later that night.