Chapter Text
Trinity Santos would not have described herself as suicidal.
Other people might have. Doctors, probably. Therapists, definitely. Whitaker, if he ever found the wrong document on the wrong night and let panic do the naming for him.
But Trinity wouldn’t.
She had a complicated history with self-care, sure. A few old scars on her thighs that made doctors lower their voices and therapists soften theirs. A somewhat hostile relationship with sleep, food, medication, follow-up appointments, and the general concept of keeping a human body alive with any real enthusiasm. But that wasn’t the same thing as wanting to die.
Did she love being alive?
No.
Was she particularly excited about the endless administrative burden of continuing to exist?
Also no.
But most days, she managed.
She got up. She went to work. She drank terrible coffee. She answered texts when guilt outweighed exhaustion. She paid rent. She kept plants alive for almost impressive stretches of time before forgetting they depended on her.
That counted as living, apparently.
The question had come up in therapy, because of course it had.
Her psychologist had asked it gently, which somehow made it worse.
“And when he gets out?” she had said. “How do you think you’ll cope with that?”
Trinity remembered looking at the carpet.
Beige. Cheap. Stained near the leg of the armchair. She had focused on that stain like it might contain a better answer.
It didn’t.
The truth had arrived immediately.
I won’t.
She hadn’t said it out loud.
The psychologist had waited, pen still in hand, mistaking Trinity’s silence for processing.
But Trinity wasn’t processing.
She already knew.
It wasn’t fear. Not exactly.
Fear would have implied energy. A body preparing to run, fight, scream, survive. Trinity knew fear. She had lived with it long enough to recognize its shape.
This was different.
This was the absence of energy.
The understanding that if Coach Hale ever walked freely through the world again, if she had to share grocery stores and sidewalks and weather with him, if his name could appear in the same ordinary news cycle as traffic accidents and city council updates, then something in her would simply stop.
Not because she wanted death.
Because she did not have enough life left to spend on surviving him twice.
That was why she started the letter.
Not that night because she planned to use it.
Not soon.
Not even close.
It was more of a precaution. A document for a future version of herself. A future Trinity who had exhausted every option, every strategy, every stubborn little reason to stay.
A future Trinity who had reached the date.
The date was not written down anywhere. Never on paper. Never in her phone. Never somewhere a therapist could call it a plan and a roommate could call it an emergency.
But it was there.
Marked somewhere quiet and private inside her mind.
The day Richard Hale got out.
The day the world decided he had paid whatever price it thought men like him were supposed to pay. The day people started using words like served, released, rehabilitated, as if language could scrub the shape of his hands from her memory.
That was the day Trinity had chosen.
A line in the sand.
A private agreement between Trinity and the part of her that still woke up some nights with his voice in her ear.
The apartment was quiet when she opened her laptop. Whitaker was working a night shift, which made the place feel larger than usual. Too many corners. Too much dark glass in the windows.
Music played softly from her phone.
A ridiculous song for the occasion, honestly. Too loud. Too alive. It made the whole thing feel less like a goodbye and more like a bad joke written by someone who hated subtlety.
She almost smiled.
The cursor blinked on a blank document.
Trinity typed:
Whitaker,
Then stopped.
Too much.
Too direct.
She deleted it.
Then wrote it again.
Whitaker,
Better.
She flexed her fingers over the keyboard.
I don’t really know how to write this without making it sound dramatic, which is unfortunate, because I know you hate dramatic and I hate being perceived.
That was closer.
She kept typing.
First of all, this is not your fault. I know that is exactly the sort of thing people write in these letters, and I know it probably never works, but I’m writing it anyway because you are the kind of person who would try to make it your fault out of sheer stubbornness.
So don’t.
You were good to me. Better than I made easy. You gave me space when I needed it and coffee when I pretended I didn’t. You changed the lock without making me explain why I couldn’t stop looking at the door. You never asked for the full story, which somehow made me want to tell you more of it.
She stopped.
Her throat felt tight.
That irritated her.
She was not doing this tonight. That was the whole point.
This wasn’t tonight.
This wasn’t even soon.
This was supposed to belong to a different Trinity. An older Trinity. One who had spent years preparing herself for the inevitable and had still come up empty.
She looked back at the screen.
I’m sorry if this is selfish.
She frowned.
Deleted it.
No.
She was tired of apologizing for what other people had broken.
I need you to know I did try.
That one stayed.
I tried for longer than I thought I could. I went to work. I paid rent. I answered texts, sometimes. I learned which grocery store aisles made me feel cornered and avoided them like a functional adult. I sat through therapy and lied only when the truth felt too humiliating to say out loud. I made jokes. I kept breathing. I did all the things people tell you to do when they want proof that you’re getting better.
And sometimes I was better.
That’s the worst part, maybe. I wasn’t miserable every second. There were days when I forgot to be afraid. There were mornings when the coffee was good and you were playing music too loud in the kitchen and I thought, almost accidentally, that I could do this. That I could stay.
Her hands slowed.
For a few minutes, Trinity just sat there, watching the cursor blink at the end of the sentence.
There was comfort in the distance.
In the idea that this document belonged to a future far enough away to feel almost fictional.
Years from now, when Hale got out, she would have this. Whitaker would have this. There would be no confusion. No frantic searching for reasons. No one tearing apart the last ordinary things she had said, trying to find warning signs in grocery lists and bad jokes.
It would be clean.
Considerate, almost.
Then she snorted.
Because apparently she could still recognize how insane that sounded.
She typed again.
And yes, before you judge me, I’m aware that using an AI to help clean up your suicide note would be an incredibly bleak thing to do. Sorry, Whitaker. Maybe this is just the standard template everyone gets now. I promise I won’t be careless enough to leave the part that says [insert name here].
That was hers.
Completely hers.
Too stupid to delete.
She left it in.
She saved the document under a name so boring it looked suspicious.
Then she closed the laptop.
Not because she was finished.
Because she wasn’t going to finish it tonight.
Tonight she was only tired. Tomorrow she would go to work. She would make coffee. She would pretend not to notice when Whitaker noticed things. She would be alive in the quiet, unimpressive way she had become good at being alive.
There was time.
That was the lie that made everything bearable.
There was time.
Her phone buzzed.
Once.
Then again.
Trinity ignored it at first. Probably the hospital. A schedule change. Whitaker complaining about vending machine coffee. Some automated reminder about an appointment she would definitely consider cancelling.
The third buzz made her reach for it.
Two missed calls from an unknown number.
One message.
She opened it.
For a moment, the words refused to become language.
Then they did.
Richard Hale has been granted early release.
Her body understood before her mind did.
The room narrowed.
The air changed.
The laptop sat closed on the desk, the unfinished letter hidden inside it, still addressed to Whitaker, still meant for a day years and years away.
Trinity stared at the message until the screen blurred.
The future had arrived early.
And all her careful, distant plans moved with it.