Three Years Ago

"I'm sorry Dave. Really I am, but... I can't watch you keep circling the drain like this." Tears burned in her eyes as she spoke, but Penny stood firm.

David looked confused and hurt, but more than anything he looked defeated. "I... Ok. I'm sorry too. I want to do right by you Penny, but..."

"You wonderful idiot," Penny cut him off, "It's not about you not doing enough for me, David. It has never been about that. But you can't love me until you love yourself. I think... I think I need space. I love you, and at the moment that's killing me. When was the last time you did something for You? You were working on a game, what happened to that?"

"...It wasn't going anywhere." He couldn't meet her eye, but his jaw set and his nails dug into his palms. "I had to focus on work, stuff that actually pays the bills! I am being responsible, here. I'm putting money aside for our future!"

She sighed "I know, but that's my point. You've been working with no end goal for the past two years, just punching the clock, coming home, doing the same tomorrow. You were passionate about your game, I know you were. I get that it's nice to have security but we are financially comfortable, we have been for a while, so why not let yourself live a little? Take some time for yourself. I'm going to do the same. I need you to live the life you want, rather than going along with whatever you think you should be doing, because at the moment..."

David looked up at her, that same resigned look on his face. It was like he'd known this was coming, but hadn't been able to muster the energy to change it. "What is it?"

"At the moment, it's like you're making me watch the man I fell in love with die slowly in front of me." She tried not to see the way those words hit him. She failed. David flinched, like she'd slapped him. She didn't wait for his reply, just turning on one heel, and walking out of the apartment door. She paused on the threshold. "I love you, David Fletcher. You can call me, when you decide to take what you actually want."

It had been hard, at first. A four year relationship is very seldom a clean break. But you keep on going, even though it hurts like hell to cook a meal and realize you set out two plates, or when you call out that you're home only for the empty silence to greet you. And oh god, it makes a hollow pit in your gut when you stretch out in a bed you keep telling yourself is too small, only to find... More space. Because you are alone. Sleeping alone, after four years memorizing the rhythm of a second heartbeat that is now missing. But you move forward. You have to.

Penny hated thinking like that. It's not like David had died. Not physically, anyway. He was still alive. He just wasn't living. He was going through life in a fugue, a hollow shell of the man she loved. She wanted to break the self imposed silence, but he needed this. A shock to the system.

Weeks became months. Months turned to years. David still hadn't called and Penny would hate to admit it, but she grieved. The future she had been building with David was gone. She had killed it, in a way. But in another, it had been a mercy to both of them to end it. The man she had been building that life with was being ground away every day in a job he hated and a life he hadn't chosen. He didn't have the strength left in him to fight it, so he was letting himself become a worn down cog in the machine. Penny hadn't fallen in love with a cog, she had given her heart to a man. An honest, hard-working man, one who made games in his spare time and tinkered with code and lit up when ever he found a problem he didn't fully understand. She couldn't stay to watch the last flickers of that man be snuffed out.