Trapped In Your Bleeding Heart (Riff x Reader)

Chapter Thirty Nine - The Aftermath

There was nothing that could've been done.

Bernardo died at the scene.

He bled out right in front of me.

Despite the useless excuse I called medical training, all I could do was watch.

Tony made it further, staggering into the streets as the chaos scattered. It wasn't his illness that ended his life. He was found two days after the rumble in an alleyway. He'd been shot dead.

I couldn't go back home. Maria and Anita must have been drowning in sorrow, and hatred, and I knew I would only make things worse.

What I needed to do was get away.

But there was one thing keeping me in Manhattan, tying me down with an ever fragile string.

The boy in the hospital bed beside me.

Riff had been in a persistent vegetative state since the rumble. A coma caused by a trauma to the head. Someone slammed the side of his skull into a wall after he had lost consciousness due to the blood loss of his stab wound. A knife to the gut.

That's what the doctor had told me, though his eyes were skeptical; confused. I guess it wasn't common to see a lady drenched in rain, dirt, and blood—mascara smeared from more than just tears.

I'd cleaned up since then, but my comprehension had always been clear. I wasn't some fool who thought Riff would have a bruise and get better. The part of his skull that got hit was the temporal process. The association area. Emotions. Memory, equilibrium. Even some of the motor functions were kept behind that tissue. If Riff ever did wake up, he'd likely be altered. And I didn't know whether to be furious or devastated.

"I told you so, Riff, damnit." I muttered, blinking away the tears forming in my eyes, tired of crying. So tired of it.

Despite it all, he was beautiful. Peaceful. Despite everything, no one could deny the pieces of his soul that seeped through the hurt boy who hurt others.

I made up my mind.

I needed to leave. I needed to get out of the city, away from this wreck. It was a tragic, ironic mess I'd made out of my life. I wanted to be a nurse. I wanted to help people. But after moving to Manhattan, all I had done was become attached to people. To love those around me, just to watch them die. And I did nothing to stop it.

I wasn't who I thought I was.

I couldn't go back to my apartment, not now, not yet. So I went to Riff's instead. There, I could find a suitcase, and after that, I'd figure it out.

I'd left the room unlocked, in case Tony came back. Now I knew where Tony really was, killed in cold blood. It was surely a Shark that had done it. It didn't matter anymore. I was leaving.

The door opened with a creak, and it was so quiet, I was sure no one was there.

My impression was wrong.

Diesel and Action sat next to each other, sharing an ice pack. By the radio stood Mouthpiece, Tiger, and Ice. On the couch was Mac, petting Cash. All eyes fell on me.

"Dolly." Diesel said. A solemn acknowledgement.

"Hey." I said back. It was an effort not to break down right there.

I closed the door behind me. The click of the latch felt too final.

Mouthpiece spoke next.

"We're listening for Snowboy." He gestured to the radio. "When Tony was found, it was all those reporters could talk about."

"No one's seen him?" I asked.

"If we had, would we be listening to the radio?" Ice retorted, a bite of pain lacing his tone.

Deep breath. Take a deep breath, Rose.

Ice rubbed his eyes. "Sorry, Dolly. It's been a long couple of days."

Muffled reporter voices shifted to melodic notes as the news changed to music. Static-filled classics buzzing through the radio. I nodded to the floor in a silent understanding. It certainly had been a long couple of days.

The nostalgic melody swayed the room. Ice reached the volume knob, and I was sure he was going to shut the music off, but instead, he turned it up. He turned to me.

Eyes dark and bordered like a bruise, red from tears, heartbroken from disappointment, he closed the space between us, held out his hands, and started dancing with me.

His grip, his guidance, he navigated it like muscle memory—years of underground jazz clubs and jive-filled events clicking into place. I rested a palm on his shoulder, and let him sway us to the music. It wasn't really a dance. Or, it was almost a dance.

It was release.

It was swaying, and a head pressed on my shoulder, and quiet crying.

Grief is a distant enemy until it crashes toward you and drowns you under the surface of something that used to be love.

I didn't have the heart to tell them that I was only there to pack a bag.

Tiger came behind him, and as if Ice could sense it, he pulled away from me. Tiger held a hand out, and I had the heart to smile as I took it.

The dance we shared wasn't even the semblance of one. He just hugged me, and rocked back and forth, like he was keeping me safe.

Like when he was holding me, he was holding a piece of Riff.

Action came and joined. Then Mouthpiece, and Ice. But it didn't feel quite like a group hug.

Ice who was the first to speak.

"You seen him? Riff?"

I nodded. The comfort dispersed into half-embarrassed boys loitering away to the corners of the room.

"He's... stable."

"He's gonna sleep forever." Said Mouthpiece, almost cold, but mostly just hopeless. "My old man went into a sleep like that and never woke up."

Ice glanced at me. "What do you think?" He asked. "Think there's a chance?"

I swallowed nothing. Shrugged. Even if there was a huge chance, I didn't know who I wanted to be anymore. I couldn't remember why I ever came here.

"I don't know." I answered. My voice squeezed into something quiet halfway through. I fought back tears. "I'm going to—" I gestured to Riff's room.

The bed was unmade. How I left it. Everything was exactly the same. The smell of him. The pictures. Of course it was. He'd only been gone
for a few days. Why did it feel like something so much more permanent than that?

I found a luggage case, small, but it would work. I didn't have much. Didn't need much.

On the wall were his pictures. On the floor, his cut hair.

I left through the fire escape.

Authors note:      helo