Melody Klein was broken, shattered, splintering... Nowhere near as bad as her beloved older brother, mind, but she wasn't whole any more. She was beginning to think she never would be.

The events of Barren Pines had taken a toll on a lot of it's survivors, most everyone shoving the events in the back of their minds to try and forget (not that many of them remembered exactly). Perhaps that was part of the problem with some that were slowly making their way to the deep end of the pool to drown. People like herself and Ignacio who had no outlet for the horrors they'd been through, that haunted their dreams and left them glad they couldn't remember in the morning. Of course in the case of herself versus her brother... Melody's outlet had been becoming a senshi.

Ignacio's decent into madness had come from the sobering effects of Barren Pines survivors, how many close people he had lost. Then between having to repeat his senior year and trouble at home, looking for some one to latch onto had been his only saving grace. Grayson had, at one point, been a source of comfort and safety for Ignacio. Some one her brother had loved. His "death" had been the last straw for her brother, his sanity pushed over the edge and into oblivion.

Had she been around at this time he wouldn't be so badly splintered...

Still it was good for him that she found him when she did, any longer and who knew what could have happened to the once bright young man. It was but after a couple of visits to his ram-shackled apartment that her mind had been made up, watching him spiral farther and farther into his own shattered world. Able to convince him to move in with her family it was now up to her to fix what had been done.

Moving out from the dorms and back into her home, cutting out all of her out of school rehearsals and performances, Ignacio became her sole focus. And in a way he was her saving grace.

Barren Pines was something Melody could mention in passing but would dream of later as her mind tried desperately to remember what it could not. As such they ended up twisted and scrambled, parts of it pieces she knew had once happened and other parts what her mind made up for what it couldn't remember. So many times she woke up screaming...

But then she became a Sailor Soldier, able to aid in the fight against those who would seek to destroy their world. Between her newfound powers and struggling to keep up with make-up work and the rest of her school work, her nightmares had faded as she wore herself down trying to do it all with out changing her schedule.

Eventually it became easier to juggle it all, though the battles got tougher. Her only regret had been that she had no one to talk to about it. The had come the death of the little alien children. She hadn't met them until the tree had called her attention. Her biggest regret was having been there that night, forced to watch as that talking tree had given its life to protect not its children but the senshi who had come to its call. Even now she could still see how they died, all of them slaughtered. And the youngest-

Despite her newest set of nightmares, throwing herself at school, music and being a senshi had been great for forgetting. Though the biggest help had been the time she'd spent with one Azzo Crowley. Her first crush, and later the first person she'd fallen in love with, any time she had spent with him had made life so much easier to bear. She could safely say that, with him, she knew what love was and should have been. It was easy to picture him at her side for the rest of her life.

He'd also been her own downfall. Love was something Melody had never been interested in until she met Azzo, though it didn't help that there had been a pull between them. Something that called to one another. Her lack of romantic knowledge had her unsure of how or when to tell the puppeteer of how she felt until the day at the cafe. It hadn't been much, and probably not clear to him, but she had truly felt that "I hope to one day be in a relationship where me and mine can speak with such an understanding" had been the closest thing to saying she loved him and wanted to be with him.

Hell it had been the perfect opportunity to speak up if he liked her! Instead she'd been given a chuckle followed by "True, it's still slightly weird" and a change of the subject. That was it. She'd spent the rest of their day together wallowing in doubt and self-pity as she'd manage to come to the decision that maybe her feelings were only one-sided.

It wasn't long after she had found her brother wondering the streets and the changes her life would take began. Having decided that maybe love wasn't for her, or at least Azzo's, she'd decided to give up. Ignacio thought this was for the better, in one of his lucid moments back before he started getting worse, saying that if Azzo had missed such an opportunity he didn't deserve her. She'd rebelled at first, not wanting to give up on the man she'd tried giving her heart to. But by the time he'd called her phone and asked if she'd go out with him it was too late.

She'd given up on them being an "us" and had turned to focusing on taking care of her shattered brother who needed her more then Azzo would need her. If nothing else there had always been Aurora, who she had felt was probably a better match for Azzo then she. That didn't mean it didn't hurt, still not over him and unable to find some one to fix her, she had her own demons to contend with after all.

Though speaking of Ignacio...

Back from the little bit of shopping she needed to do for one of her classes, mostly just a supply run, she kicked her heels off at the door then stepped in to the living room to see if Ignacio was, perchance, playing video games. Finding him staring almost mindless at the TV screen with a controller in his hand, she smiled sadly as she realized he'd probably zoned off and forgot to turn the TV on when he'd sat down. Dropping the plastic bag by the couch, the blonde made her way over to turn it on.

His golden eyes lit up and he turned to look at her, a failed attempt at a smile on his face. She could feel her heart splinter more at that and she kneeled down beside him as she placed a kiss on the top of his head.

"I'm home, 'Nacio. Did you miss me?"

All she got was a hug in return before he turned his attention back to the screen, shifting slightly to let her snuggle against him as he played his game for the time being.