Release Me:
Broken
x x x
'I think a curse should rest on me — because I love this war. I know it's smashing and shattering the lives of thousands every moment — and yet — I can't help it — I enjoy every second of it.'
~Winston Churchill
x x x
Warner looks at me like I might break.
"Are you sure you should get up?" I hear him saying, whispering almost, like the fact that I just survived a gunshot wound to the chest is the biggest secret in the world. "I think you should be resting."
"Here?" I reply, and something about this moment and the way he's looking at me makes me think that my voice really is too loud. "You're kidding, right?" I force my legs to move, my arms to move, even though they're made of cement and exhaustion and ice. Because I know I'm right—I know we I can't stay here. Anderson needs to think I'm still bleeding out, well and truly dead, staining his living room floor.
Sitting up is dragging a bag of rocks across the sheets until my arms, legs and head are throbbing and aching with the effort of it. I force myself closer to the edge of the bed, testing the strength in my fingers. If I can just make it to the bathroom…
Warner's just standing and standing and staring and staring at me—and I don't even remember how he came to be on the other side of the room. My head is ringing with the sound of bullets and blood and Warner's screams and all of a sudden, I've forgotten how to move.
"Thank you," I mumble, my throat full of cotton.
"For what?" Still so quiet.
"For saving my life." I can feel my lips forming the words, but no sound comes out and I realize, very acutely, that my heartbeat has cut off my voice box.
Warner says nothing and I feel rather than see him move closer. I want to look at him—to read his expression, his eyes, his lips, to know what he thinks of me, but I'm such, such, such a coward, terrified of what I might see in his face.
I can see the black fabric of slacks almost touching my knees.
"Juliette." His warm breath is stirring my hair and the cement in my limbs has hardened, turned rock solid and I can't move, can't move, can't move.
Adam and Kenji are out there, fighting, fighting, fighting for me and I won't even fight for myself.
I see his arm, his hand, reaching for my face, lift it so he can see me, but I can't see him. Everything's blurring, mixing together the splotches of colours until nothing makes sense. There's a ripping sound and I think I've forgotten how to breathe again.
"Don't cry, love. We'll figure something out," I hear him say and all I can think is I'm not crying I'm not crying why does he think I'm crying? And then I feel something cold splatter on my hands and I look down and I'm horrified, horrified, horrified because I am crying and I'm crying all over Warner's hands which he's resting on mine and now I can't stop, I can't stop, I can't stop…
Kenji, Adam, Castle, The Reestablishment, Anderson, Warner. So many people fighting over for so many different things and I wish I could be stronger right now, because I know I should be fighting too.
But I'm not.
I'm useless.
I feel so weak and even though my body can't move I'm falling forward until I collapse against firmness and warmth and the ripping sound is louder now, in my ears and I don't understand what's happening to me.
My body is shattered.
Bands of steel tighten around my back and arms, trying to hold me together and the bed disappears from underneath me.
"Sara! Sonya!" The words reverberate through my chest and I want to turn and see, see why I can feel Warner's voice, feel the anxiety, the strength, but my body can't, won't move. I hear the clamour, hear the urgency as they come running. In a bizarre moment of clarity I wonder at how I'd forgotten they were here.
"What's wrong?" It's Sara speaking and she sounds sleepy.
"She just…she isn't—I don't—" a deep breath, "She seemed okay, exhausted, but okay and then she just—"
I'm falling to pieces, I want to tell them. I'm breaking, cracking, falling and I can't make it stop. Please make it stop.
"She's just overloaded, I think," I hear Sara say, much closer now. "Do you know if she's in any pain?"
"N-no. I don't know. She didn't say anything about pain. Juliette?" I can feel his voice, his words brushing my cheek, as soft as a caress. "Does it hurt anywhere?"
I force my eyelids back, force my eyes to take in the harsh light above my head—blink, blink, blink— trying to make out where I am, but all the colours refuse to paint a picture that makes sense to me, that I can process and hard as I try to find it, my voice remains lost.
"I have an idea," Sonya is speaking from further away, moving closer. "Where is the closest bathroom here?"
"There's an ensuite in my room," Warner says immediately. "Follow me."
It's alright I want to tell them. I'm just screwed up, like the rest of this God-forsaken world, this planet, everything I try to do is just wrong, broken, always stupid even when I think it feels right and—
There's a strange rumbling sound in my head; I feel a flash of heat against my skin and cringe away.
"The hot water and salts should calm her down," one of the twins is speaking over the roar in my ears—I can't tell who. "She's been through an awful lot in the last 48 hours. Her system is probably having difficulty coping."
It's quiet then, and I can feel my body warming, feel the nightgown they had me in sticking to my skin. It was uncomfortable. Suffocating. The girls were probably right.
I really am going insane.
"Alright," Sara whispers. "Put her in. She should feel better after this. We can sit with her while—"
Fear gripes me, a sudden cold hand squeezing around my throat. Too much. The warm damp air was making it more difficult to breathe. It all felt unwelcome and intrusive. Please get me out of here, I wanted to say. Please, please, please. I don't like it.
Don't make me do something I'll regret.
I groaned and tried to move away, but I was drained—a dead weight. Nothing. My toes skimmed something wet, warm and panic clawed at my chest, burning.
No.
More.
Flames flew down through my arms, fuelled by my terror, my need to survive, to defend. It was wrenching my eyes open against the searing harshness of the lights on my face and throwing my arms up into the air, clawing and grabbing at whatever I could to get away from it. I just wanted it all to stop.
"No!"
"Juliette! Shit—NO! Stay away from me you two! If she grabs you—Argh! Juliette! You're okay! You'll be okay!"
"No, no, no, no, no…" All I can say, all I can think is please, please, please, please don't make me go in there. Please…
My feet drag through the water and I gasp as the heat grips my skin, snaking its way upward, through my legs and into my stomach and suddenly, everything comes sharply into focus. My arms are like a vice around Warner's neck and I'm already half-in a bathtub full of hot water, the blood seeping out of my nightgown.
"Juliette!" And just as I realize what's happening and let go it's too late —Warner's falling into me and I'm falling into the water. Fear — plain, unadulterated and fleeting — grips me as I'm shoved and held under water by the weight of Warner's body and oh I've forgotten how to hold my breath and I'm drawing water into my lungs before Warner's weight is gone and he's heaving me out of the water by my ruined clothes coughing and splattering for oxygen.
"Juliette? God, are you okay?" I can't answer him. I'm still coughing, retching, gulping and he steadies me with an arm around my waist.
"Jesus," he hisses when my coughing subsides, breathing more normal. "You just took ten years off my life. What was that about?"
"Is she okay?" A voice calls from the other side of the door — Warner must have closed it before.
"I think so," he calls back, emerald eyes darting back and forth across my face.
"What—" I croak, and then cough when the effort of speaking triggers another spasm in my chest. "Where am I?"
"In my bathtub," Warner replies immediately, the expression on his face makes him look like he's amused, but there's a tightness around his mouth, a rigidity to his whole body that I don't understand. He's looking at me, just looking and looking and hundreds of stories are flitting across his face — my head and heart hurt trying to follow and comprehend each one — before it settles somewhere between terror and bewilderment.
It takes me 2 seconds to process this.
3
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6 to realize just how close we are, noses almost touching, his warm breath tickling my cheek and stirring my damp hair.
7
8
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10 for me to see the worry, the hurt, the fear right there in his eyes, accusing me of so much and I'm grasping, reaching, searching for the words — the nouns, verbs, adjectives, anything to make him stop looking at me like I'd just tried to kill him several times and almost succeeded.
11
12 to know that the reason I couldn't come up with anything to say was because that's exactly what I'd done to him.
'…You destroy me.'
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16 to know I needed to apologize — that I wanted to apologize. Anything to make him stop looking at me like that.
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18 For him to blink—blink, blink, blink—and my body screamed to touch him.
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20 seconds of silence to know if one of us didn't move soon, I couldn't trust myself with what I might do. My heart was beating uneasily, like it didn't trust me either.
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24 to know I wasn't going to be the one to move.
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26 before I felt Warner's hands at the base of my skull, lightly massaging the tension from my muscles until I relax.
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28 for him to pull me in, watching my face so carefully and push his lips to my forehead.
29 "I'm so happy you're okay." And his voice is like warm honey dripping down my eyelids. My heart is trapped, racing, desperately trying to fly to him but it can't.
30 And then he's moving, gathering his legs underneath himself and moving away and leaving. Leaving. Leaving.
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32 My arms reach for him without my permission.
33 He pretends not to notice.
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35 He's reaching for a towel, not looking at me, not looking at me and my head turns to follow him, to will him to look at me.
36. "Stay in here for a while. The twins think the hot water might do you some good."
So
Much
Pain
He stops with his hand on the door and this is my chance, I think, to stop him. To ask him to stay. He wants me to stop him. Or maybe he doesn't, because that hand is shaking and his jaw is clenched like he's angry. But I have to tell him. Tell him that there is definitely, certainly, obviously a part of me that wants him. It wants him so much it hurts. Burns.
37 '…Please don't shoot me for this.'
38
39 I say nothing. My heart is in my throat, screeching to get out. To explode in his hands. Instead I say only, "Okay."
40 He's opening the door and leaving — so fast so fast, no, no, no — and the girls come in, gloves on, and start peppering me with questions.
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42 "Are you cold?" Sara asks, patting me on the head.
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45 Before I realize how hard I'm shivering and that's why she thinks I'm cold and suddenly I'm miserable because and I can't tell her that my shivering has nothing to do with the temperature of the water.
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47 And they're re-running the water—hotter this time, and washing my hair and ripping me free of my soiled nightgown.
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49
50 and I want to disappear beneath the water and dissolve just like salt or sugar and stay invisible. But I don't.
Wrapped in a thick towel the girls escort me back to Warner's room — of course he's nowhere to be seen — and they help me get dressed and I'm so exhausted, I think as I slip down onto the pillow, I just want the sweet oblivion of sleep to take me. Too tired to cry. Too tired to feel anything. I am nothing but chaos, and chaos is never anything but heart-shatteringly painful to everything and everyone in comes into contact with.
"I'm so desperately in love with you…"
I should have stayed dead when Anderson shot me.