S5 Episode Eleven: "Near Enough"

Melody had gotten very good at steady hands. 

The golden retriever’s breathing came in fast and uneven beneath her palm, ribs lifting in shallow, uncertain bursts as it hovered on the edge of panic. 

“Hey… easy,” she murmured to him. “You’re okay.” 

The dog didn’t understand the words, not really, but he did understand tone. That was usually enough. 

You don’t fight fear directly: that only makes it spike. You give it something steadier to lean against, something predictable enough that it doesn’t feel cornered. 

“Let’s keep him calm,” said the veterinarian from across the room as she adjusted a setting. 

“Already on it.” 

Melody shifted with the dog, letting its movement guide hers: no force, no sudden adjustments, just presence that was steady and unremarkable. Slowly, the tension began to ease. Not gone, but loosening, the retriever’s breath evening out a fraction. 

She exhaled, quieter this time. Even the slightest improvement is still something to count. 

The clinic smelled faintly of antiseptic and fur: clean and sharp, with something warmer underneath that never really left. Many would have considered it unpleasant, but to her it wasn’t. Outside, late summer was starting to thin at the edges. It wasn’t gone just yet, just… softer. The heat didn’t sit on your shoulders the same way, and the light stretched longer into the evening, lingering like it wasn’t in a hurry to leave. Inside, everything stayed where it was supposed to. Controlled. Measured. Predictable.

She liked it like this… probably more than she would admit that she should. 

At New Atlantis University, they’d called it “Field Placement”: a clean phrase for something messier in practice without the extra help. They would coordinate with businesses and programs in fields related to their students’ studies, enabling internships and a workforce in turn. It was a bridge between the theory of what they were learning and whatever came next. For Melody, it had become something steadier than that. 

It was an anchor, whether she had meant it to be one or not. 

“Hey,”

She glanced up as she had stripped off her gloves and washed her hands. Her coworker leaned in the doorway, arms crossed, expression carefully neutral in that way that wasn’t neutral at all. 

“You good?” 

Melody dried her hands and offered a practiced smile. 

“Always.” 

It landed the way it was supposed to, as it usually did. Her coworker watched her for a beat longer than was necessary, then nodded. 

“Cool. Just checking.” 

And just like that, it was dropped, set aside before it could turn into something heavier. 

Melody followed a moment later, flipping through a chart as she walked. The clinic moved in its usual rhythm: phones ringing, low voices, the occasional bark cutting through and fading just as quickly. Normal. Grounded. 

And then– 

“... if she’s available—” 

She froze. 

The voice hit first. Recognition came right behind it, quick enough to tighten something in her chest before she could place it. 

At the front desk, her coworker shifted into a professional tone. 

“She’s in the back right now. Do you have an appointment for a pet, or…?” 

“I don’t. I just…” 

Melody rounded the corner before she could stop herself and saw him. 

Lance stood at the counter, one hand resting awkwardly against it like he wasn’t entirely sure what to do with himself in this setting. He looked better: the worst of his injuries had faded into something less immediate, but there was still something careful in the way he held himself. 

Not stiff, not relaxed either, just… measured. 

Always measured. 

He looked up and saw her. 

“Hey…” 

A small word, but it didn’t land small. Something shifted in her: quick, sharp, a little too sudden. Not panic, but close enough to notice. 

She steadied it without thinking. 

“Hey.” 

A moment passed between them. Not uncomfortable, just real. 

“You’re… here,” she said, gesturing lightly toward the clinic, as if the space itself needed acknowledgement. 

“Yeah,” he said with a faint breath of a laugh. “I wasn’t sure if this was a bad idea and didn’t think about it until I was already inside.” 

That pulled the smallest flicker of a smile from her. 

“What do you need?” 

Direct, not unkind, just… clearer than before. 

“I was wondering if you’d maybe want to take a walk with me,” he said. 

“Just to talk.”

No padding around it this time, no attempt to soften it after the fact. 

Melody studied him—not the words, but him—then glanced at the clock. 

Fifteen minutes left: not ideal, but close enough.

“If you are still here,” she said. “I’m off in fifteen.” 

“I will be.” 

No hesitation at all. 

That registered. 

She nodded once and turned, stepping back into her work as though the moment hadn’t shifted anything. The motions came easily, muscle memory carrying her through what remained of her shift.

Her hands stayed steady, even if everything else didn’t. 

He was still there when her shift ended. 

Of course he was. 

They stepped out into the evening together, the air warm but thinning, the light stretching golden across the street and catching on anything as if it would hold it for a second longer. 

“Waterfront?” he asked, almost like he didn’t want to assume. 

Melody nodded. “Yeah.” 

They walked side by side, not quite in sync at first, but close enough that it didn’t feel like distance. Not really. The gap between them wasn’t measured in steps. 

By the time they reached the water, the sunlight had fractured into softer reflections, breaking across the surface in uneven lines. The air carried a faint salt edge that clung to the back of the throat. People moved around them: voices, laughter, the steady motion of a city winding down… but none of it quite touched them.

They found a bench overlooking the harbor and sat. 

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

“I’ve been thinking,” Lance said finally. 

Not deflecting, not joking, just… starting. 

Melody turned slightly toward him, giving him space without pulling away from it. 

“About everything.” 

There it was. 

“My life isn’t… simple.” 

He paused, searching for something that didn’t quite exist in words. 

“There are things I can’t really explain… not in a way that would make sense, at least not right now.” 

She didn’t interrupt, letting the silence stretch even when it started to feel a little too long. Filling it wouldn’t help. 

“I know how it looks,” he continued.  “The disappearing, the way it all probably doesn’t make sense… the rest of it.” 

His voice held, but there was tension under it now, tighter than before. 

“This isn’t me not caring. It’s not that. It’s just… doesn’t look like what it should look like.” 

“I know.” 

Soft, not cutting him off, just catching the edge before it slipped. 

He blinked, thrown slightly off balance. Some of the tension in his shoulders eased, just enough to notice. 

“I know,” she repeated, quieter this time. 

Not certainty: trust… or something akin to it. 

He exhaled the breath he seemed to have been holding and kept going. 

“This isn’t fair, what I am asking you to deal with…. I know that. I just don’t know how to fix that part right now.” 

Melody let that sit, let it land where it was going to before she answered. 

“I don’t need perfect.” 

That pulled his attention fully to her. 

“I don’t need every detail,” she went on. 

“But I need to know I’m not imagining this… that there’s actually something here… Because it feels real.” 

A small, almost uncertain smile flickered, there and gone. 

“It’s just… hard to hold onto something you can’t see clearly.” 

She gestured lightly between them. 

“The injuries, the disappearing… the things you don’t say… I can feel the shape of it.” 

Not all of it, not clearly. Enough. 

“And I don’t need to see everything,” she added. 

A brief pause. 

“But I need to know there is still space for me in it.”

Lance went still. Not frozen, simply held, like something inside him had moved too fast, too close to the surface. Melody felt it immediately, that edge where something either settled… or tipped the other way entirely. Her instinct flickered, to ease it and guide it somewhere safer, but she didn’t. This wasn’t something she could stabilize for him. 

So she stayed, steady and present. No pushing or pulling, just there. 

His eyes met hers, and for a suspended second, there it was… his lips parted to say something, then he pulled back. Carefully, deliberately, like someone choosing not to startle something already too close to the edge. 

“I want you to be safe…” he said quietly. 

“That’s not… I mean, that’s not an excuse. It’s just the only thing that feels solid enough to say out loud.” 

Melody held his gaze and didn’t chase what almost happened. She didn’t reach for the thing he didn’t say. She understood: you couldn’t force something into the open before it was ready. Pushing would only drive it further back. 

All you could really do was decide if you were going to stay… or not.

“Okay,” she said after a moment. 

Not agreement. Not refusal. Just… staying. 

He nodded like he understood exactly what that meant. 

They didn’t resolve it, didn’t define anything. But something settled between them anyway: fragile, unspoken, real in a way that didn’t need confirmation. 

The walk home felt longer, or maybe she noticed it more. 

The city moved around her, unchanged: traffic humming past, voices rising and fading, the quiet rhythm of everything continuing whether she figured anything out or not. She turned the corner and saw it. 

Giovanni’s. 

Warm light spilling onto the sidewalk. Laughter slipping through the door. A table near the window, half-visible from the street if you stood at the right angle. 

For a second, it didn’t feel like a place. It didn’t even feel real. Just something that had almost happened and didn’t quite finish becoming a memory. 

The night she’d planned, the version of it that had lived in her head longer than it ever existed in reality. The empty space where he was supposed to be. 

She slowed, just slightly. 

Her gaze lingered, not on the people inside, not on the menu, but on the idea of it. What it had been, or could have been, or maybe even never really was to begin with.

For a moment she felt it again… that same edge, that same almost… 

The pull to step inside and reclaim it, to rewrite it. 

Her foot shifted, almost forward… just enough to count but not enough to follow through… and then she didn’t. Not because it didn’t matter…

Because it did.

She exhaled softly and kept walking, holding both things at once: that she had been seen, and that she had stepped into something she didn’t fully understand. She didn’t need all the answers, or maybe she did, but not enough to leave. 

And somehow that was enough. 

The glow of Giovanni’s faded behind her, swallowed by the next stretch of street, as the night opened up ahead. 

Uncertain. Unresolved… 

But still moving.