(Y/N) Winters was twenty-two and tired to the bone.

Hollywood called her celestial, delicate, a born tragedy. They worshiped her as Ophelia in The Drowned Queen, the film that made her famous. Directors praised her “haunting sorrow.” They didn’t know it wasn’t acting.

She wasn’t playing Ophelia.

She was becoming her.

**

She lived alone in a penthouse high above Los Angeles, surrounded by golden awards and empty pill bottles. She spent nights in the bathtub, submerging just long enough to feel the quiet.

Headlines compared her to fallen legends—Plath, Monroe, Woolf—and called it flattering.

She started believing the world only loved her when she was breaking.

The night of the awards, she wore a silver gown and a practiced smile. She accepted applause like knives. She snuck away to a quiet marble hallway, chest tight, hands trembling.

She’d just read an article:

“(Y/N) Winters—A Beautiful Catastrophe in the Making.”

Maybe they were right.

She pressed her back to the wall, silently begging for air.

“Rough night?”

She froze.

Glen Powell stood a few feet away, tie loosened, watching her with unsettling clarity.

“I’m fine,” she whispered.

“You look like you’re about to disappear,” he said softly.

“Don’t. We have enough ghosts in this town.”

She turned her face away.

“How would you know?”