I Will Be Your Undoing

by Jaded

Rating: PG-13

Summary: Carol is in South Africa, plagued by sleepless, dreams, and memories of things not done.

2: Key

When her bed is lonely and the night is long, it is still his face she sees when she touches herself in the dark. It's his body pressed against hers. His breath against her neck, warm and possessive. It is his bluest eye looking at her—looking into her—memorizing the contours of a face he already knows by heart. It is his name she cries out when the music crescendos and his voice that is the song in her ear. When she is alone, she is not afraid to say his name aloud. "Tony. Tony. Tony." Like a prayer.

It's all imagination, of course. This never happened. He never happened.

On nights like these, Carol finds it hard to fall asleep.

It is not Bradfield outside her window, but Johannesburg. She's kicked off her sheets. The night is warm, and her eyes are full of bitter weeping. Hard tears because she still hasn't been able to get past the lump in her throat at the smallest of memories of him—his blue plastic bag, her hand tracing his jaw line, his house smelling of stale coffee and burnt cheese toast, those late nights, heads bowed together in study, the air between them fairly vibrating with wanting to touch and be touched—three years and it's still hard to move on. And she has tried, God knows she has tried.

Her heart, since she's left England, has remained untouched. She looks and waits, and wonders if it will ever be possible again, or if it's too late and she's locked it up with the key a thousand miles away.

When exhaustion finally sweeps her into sleep, she remembers what effortless chemistry feels like, how heady and delicious and delirious perfect attraction is. She tries not to think the word love. One day, she thinks, as the world around her falls away into dreams, she might be brave enough to go and find it again.