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"The silence depressed me. It wasn't the silence of silence. It was my own silence." - Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

Liz returned from work that day seven hours earlier. Embarrassed and cold, she had no words to describe how she felt. How could Ritter do that to her? She was a loyal employee and a hard worker. Only ten minutes late, he thought and the words echoed through her head, and she got fired. With shaking paws, she unlocked the front door and stepped into the hallway. Her briefcase just dropped out from between her paws and hit the ground with a thud. Both of her feet felt like masses of concrete. She lit a cigar between sobs and tiredly slid down the hallway wall, collapsing into a pile on the floor. Disdainfully she kicked her shoes off and watched them fly into the kitchen, bouncing off the dishwasher door. Useless, she was useless and now she'd have no money to pay the rent and they'd kick her out and so on. These disaster scenarios always played out in her head without fail, always portraying the worst case scenarios. Bumbling and exhausted, she stood up and walked to the cutlery drawer. Observing it from afar, she considered ending it right here. Hell, she tried to kill herself before. What if it actually worked now? What if they found her in the kitchen in a pool of her own blood, not a drop of it left in her body? Puffing on her stogie, she dropped it into the sink and dragged herself up the stairs and into the bathroom. Sure enough, the bottles of pills were still here. Without even bothering to look at the dosage, she popped the cap off and shook three or four into the palm of her hand. This was enough to kill the pain, right? Must have been. Wrapping her fingers around the pills, she ventured into the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed where Michael slept. He snored softly. Crossing her legs she sat opposite him and let the pills fall into a small valley that had formed on the sheets. He looked so peaceful, just asleep right there. Maybe he was dreaming of her? After all, he was smiling in his sleep. But then she reminded herself that he was probably so high on painkillers that it didn't matter what or who he dreamt of. He wouldn't remember a damned thing afterwards anyway. Tears of sadness and despair slid down her cheeks, falling down into the sheets, lost forever in the threads of the blanket. Placing one of her paws on his hand, she laid down and just closed her eyes, feeling his fingers wrap themselves around hers. It felt so warm, so wonderfully receptive. If she could, she'd just kiss him senseless now, not even giving a shit whether or not he'd be angry or he'd return the favour. The rhythm of their breathing synchronoized. How could she feel so close to someone who was unconscious and probably needed to look at her twice to even remember her name? Was she really so desperate for someone to talk to? Liz wanted him to understand, she wanted him to know how she felt, what with her illness and all.

"I'm so lost, Michael. If only you were awake." She whispered, her words piercing the darkness and the silence like a flurry of razor-sharp arrows "I've done stupid shit my whole life. And now I've gone and got myself fired. What the fuck else is there? My whole youth I've spent with people I'd rather never see again, doing things I try to forget every single fucking day of my life. The world I built in this house has collapsed. Nothing will ever bring it back. Except maybe you."

With the back of her paw she wiped her tears away and turned sideways, to face the one she loved. Finally she said it in her own mind, and it didn't even sound all that bad. Fuck it, she loved him and if he loved her back, she'd be the happiest woman alive. Insanity, she told herself, insanity. I've known him for what, 24 hours? And already I'm in love with him. Maybe taking those pills by the fistful wasn't such a bad idea. Softly, she stroked the back of his hand with her thumb, their fingers still intertwined.

"Manic depression is a bitch, you know?" She whispered inches away from his neck through a wall of sobs "One day you're all happy and fine and you feel excellent and you want to take on the world and t-the next, y-you're..."

Turning away from him, she stared at the ceiling and tried to feel the tears, the heat, and the end of all things. But it never came. The idea of suicide disappeared from her mind as quickly as it had formed. Only because she had to get through this, if only for long enough to see Michael awake again. If only for long enough to tell him how she felt and for him to explain how he felt so they could watch how it all goes down the drain side by side. Admitting her love for him in her own mind somehow made things easier. Checking once again to see if he had awakened in the meantime, she continued.

"When I was young, my dad used to go out every Friday night and get destroyed. He'd come home, bombed out of his skull, undo his belt and beat both me and Mom until there were no tears left to cry. The man was a savage. In school the other kids teased me about my black eyes and my bruises. They'd say I'm clumsy and reckless and I'd just take it all because the alternative, the truth, was too horrifying to admit even to myself. I always liked to think that whenever I came home and dad beat the shit out of me, it was all just a bad dream. I liked to think that." Liz whispered as more tears fell from her eyes "Then high school rolled around and I got in with a bad crowd. I was emotionally broken, totally fucked up in every regard. There were five of us, five broken people with nowhere to go. During our freshman year we sliced tires in convenience store parking lot. By our junior year, we were robbing liquor stores. Finally, we got into a firefight with the police one night. I didn't want to shoot anyone, I didn't want to kill anyone, I just wanted them to understand. To see why I did all these things. I spent that night crouched behind our van, waiting for it all to end while my so-called friends fell dead around me. Three of us were shot, one of us was arrested, and one walked away free. I told the cops they took me hostage and threatened me. That I'd been forced into this. The guy they took into custody called me names as two officers dragged him into the holding cells. The cops delivered me to my parents later that night and daddy got his belt out again and..."

Something in Liz's gut began to ache and she rolled to her side and put her hand on his chest, feeling how it rose and fell with each tender snore. With her index finger she made little circles on his chest. The rattling of the AC unit reverberated through the room, drowning out the noises of the crickets that plagued Phoenix day and night. Another blanket of silence descended over the room, further emphasized by the electric drone. Michael's snoring and Liz's sniffing were the only organic sounds in the entire house. Moving closer to the sleeping eagle, Liz gave him a peck on the side of his beak just softly enough not to wake him and he smiled a proper smile. Not drug-induced one, a proper one. Anyone could see that. Or at least Liz liked to think of it like that. The lies she told herself made life a little more bearable given the circumstances. Once again she whispered a mumbled goodbye and shut the door. Leaning against it, she put her paw on her chest and felt her heart beat itself to pieces. How did he get her in such a tizzy by not saying anything? She whispered an audible "Oh Fuck" when she realized that she hadn't even considered the possibility of North being in the house.

Frantically she opened doors, checking each room individually as if she was afraid of something. Of what she didn't know. The boy had a crush on her of sorts, or at least she thought he did. The way he acted around her, all protective, made this thought give root in her mind. It occurred to her that she wasn't the only one out of the three of them that suffered from unrequited affection. A sense of relief washed over her in waves. North's bed was unmade and the boxes were still everywhere. Now officially lacking anything to do, she got to work unpacking everything and putting it into shelves. At least like this she'd stop herself from freaking out.

***

North arrived late in the afternoon. The Heartbleed Bug caused a lot of issues with their servers and he'd been handling support tickets all day, wrangling clueless users around as they tried their best to avoid losing valuable passwords and credit card information. Unlocking the door, he flung his backpack aside and watched it hit a small shelf in the hallway. The vase atop said shelf wobbled from side to side, threatening to fall, and North darted over, catching it in time. What the fuck, he blurted out loud as he looked over the kitchen. Things had materialized in shelves, nooks, and crannies. Things that he remembered from somewhere, but cleaner. And then it hit him that all the boxes were gone too. Did Michael do this? Impossible, the tumbling astronaut was still firmly asleep on three fistfuls of medication. That left North with two possibilities. Three actually. One was the some sort of pervert gang operated in downtown Phoenix that broke into people's houses and rearranged their knick-knacks just to fuck with them. The second possibility was that Michael's pills transformed him into a phantom maid. The very idea of Michael doing anything in the way of cleaning was laughable to say the last. That left Elizabeth as the last possibility and she was at work. "Something's fucky" He whispered and took a can of air freshener that sat beside the sink. North held the can a considerable distance from his face, holding it like Solid Snake would a handgun. Whatever asshole did this would pay with his eyesight. He went on all fours and snuck into the living room. Checking all corners for a possible assailant, he stood up and flung the can aside. It hit the wall with a loud clank and he heard a scream from the direction of the couch. Turning, he saw a drowsy-looking Elizabeth and a fast-approaching white fluffy mass. And then everything went black.

All North knew was the couldn't breathe. The pillow that he was being strangled with didn't help either. Swatting it away from his face, he began to laugh. Liz just stared at him with an expression of disbelief as he doubled over from laughter.

"What the fuck, North. You woke me up. I thought..." She said and he cut her off "That we've been broken into, yes. I thought the same thing."

"A gang of burglars that does five hours worth of exhausting work? That I'd pay to see." Liz groaned and sat down on the sofa "If you're wondering why I'm home early, it's just that..."

She stopped herself dead mid-sentence. Flopping down on the sofa, she grabbed the controller and unpaused the game, leaving North to his own devices. Sensing that something was wrong, he sat beside her and looked at her with a cocked head and puppy eyes, hoping to wheedle out a report of what had happened. But she remained resolute in her silence. Eyes front, pokerface fixed. Between battles, she'd push the spare controller towards him. North thought that if he could get her to banter mid-game, he'd get her to say something. Anything would be helpful. Something deep inside of him ached at the thought of Liz in any sort of distress. With Michael settled into his sick room, he could return to dreaming silently of what could have been if only he had something charming to say. But his conscious self just wanted video games and Cola.

They played until the sun sank behind the city and disappeared, the nightfall swift and equally hot. Liz loosened up by the time they took a short break. Side by side they walked to the refrigerator to check what's for dinner. Liz bent down and rummaged through the contents. North stood behind her, eyeing her bottom as she moved various groceries aside. Her tail swished from side to side. It reminded North of a pendulum.

"Can you heat up a pan? We need to make some dinner." LIz said as she got her head out of the refrigerator and handed North a wrapped steak "The oil's in the second cupboard to the left."

The cat did as he was told. The oil sizzled as it fell on the pan, a sweet smell spreading through the kitchen as soon as North lowered the steak onto it. Liz leaned on the worktop and watched Zombie flip the steak, pressing it down with a spatula, jumping back slightly as oil flew out of the pan.

"So, will you finally tell me why you're home early?" Asked North and looked at Liz with pleading eyes "We've all been in dire straits. Maybe I can help you."

Liz bit her lip and mumbled something. How the hell did a member of the walking dead suddenly become so fucking perceptive? And to make matters worse, he was winning. She couldn't keep this facade of uncaring up any longer.

"I've lost my job." She whispered and exhaled, averting her eyes "Now I can't pay the rent anymore. So, by all means, kick me out."

North raised his left eyebrow but Liz couldn't see that on account of his hair. Shaking his head he laughed and turned his attention to the steak. "Why on earth would we kick you out, girl?" He asked, prodding the steak with his spatula, a geyser of oil sizzling upwards "You're our friend. Both mine and Michael's. And besides, I could never evict someone who beat me at Tekken."

Liz smiled and gave North a kiss on the cheek. Both he and Michael were adorable in their own right.

"Kiss the cook, huh?" He asked with flushed cheeks as he unloaded the steak on a plate "I need to get one of those aprons."