She'd shoved a needle through her cartilage to reopen the closed piercing which she had long since stopped wearing. Scissors went to her hair and too efficiently, like she had done it before, her long locks fell into the sink before her. She gazed at her reflection in the fingerprinted airport mirror, silently trimming a last few pieces of stray strands to their desired length.

Her stomach churned and although she'd eaten only hours before, her body told her she was empty, every bit of energy was gone, a piece of her had suddenly gone missing. She'd removed it. And by her own account. She was nauseous, but only from the position she had placed herself in; hungry for some happiness that didn't exist; tired but with only slight dark circles, anxiety knotting in her stomach, but her thoughts clear.

Lena watched as her reflection's glittered and hot tears streamed down her face. As she put the scissors down she noticed her hands were shaking.

"Last call for New York boarding," a disembodied female voice chimed overhead.

One more glance in the mirror to assure herself that she no longer looked liked Roger Taylor's long blonde haired girlfriend who currently looked absolutely tragic, she shoved the tissues she'd had out back into her overstuffed bag full of her favorite articles of clothing and her jean jacket that the band had given her. Aside from that there was nothing else, no remainder of Roger. Except of course, she pondered, except for the red leather jacket. That was the one gift with which she could not part.

She reached into the jacket harshly to pull out her boarding pass, hurried now and afraid she'd chicken out and afraid that she wanted to. In doing so she jammed her hand against a slice of cold metal.

She had recalled stowing it there the night before, the little shard of crash symbol. It cut at her hand and heart as she gripped it and she considered dropping it on the bathroom floor, leaving it to vanish into the middle of the soon to be busy airport.

But no, she thought, it will be my little reminder of what I've done.

She wanted desperately for the little shard to be poetic as she zipped it safely away in her breast pocket. Perhaps it was. Perhaps it was desperately and tragically romantic that she kept the little piece of metal as a symbol of the man she'd just left and that she was saving him from heartache and not being able to give him the life she wanted him to have. Or maybe it was a symbol to the way she had cut his heart out with the dulled edge. Or how it would be so beautiful to have that little piece of him with her always and hold only a fraction of the memories that they'd shared. But more likely it was less than that. Only a piece of metal on a string that would haunt her for decades to come, never regretting her choice, but only the way in which she had chosen to carry it out.

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a/n: how we feelin ya'll? I personally and not having a quality time because I get to be at home for the rest of the semester due to my university going all online and it's only like day ten and it's already not a good time. In other news, that means this story will likely be finished in a much more timely manor (it's been a year since I started this...)