AN: I don't know if Ian Campbell was a real person, but if so then please note that all events within the following are entirely fictional. No money is being made.
The Ten Dollar Wife
Ian Campbell could not sleep.
Again.
This was not a recent occurrence, far from it in fact. In the eight years since the war, since he and thousands of white men had been liberated from the jungle hell holes sleep had eluded him more often then not.
Sometimes it was the nightmares that did it. Dreams – memories – of his Colonel laying there upon the floor of the cabin, the blood of his mentor spattered across his own face. Sometimes the dreams were more fragmented, the smell of death and the sound of Yankers' cries or the pain as the guards'' staff crashed down upon his back.
Other times it was images that delayed sleep, that prevented his eyes from closing even though his whole body ached with the need for oblivion.
His own blood stained hands pushing Earnest's face into the mud, ignoring his comrades frantic struggles as suffocation drew nearer and nearer.
The splinters that impaled themselves into his arms and feet as he worked robotically in the sweltering jungle to lay down the railway, so often that he no longer noticed the pain nor the ever present trickle of blood flowing from his skin.
The sight of Dusty being lead away, taking the blame and prepared to lay down his life for his failure, for a shoddy escape plan that'd been his doing and the death of the those whose blood now stained his hands. His fault. All of it.
Blank eyes staring back at him from the skeletal faces of men that were already dead, for all that they were amongst the living.
Tonight it is a combination of the two that has him sitting on the edge of the bed, his hands trembling and his stomach churning, the wakefulness brought about by a half remembered dream and images that he doesn't allow to form in his minds' eye.
The soft rustling of the bedclothes sounds behind him, and he knows that his distress has pushed his wife into the foggy realm of conchiness.
Belle, his ten dollar wife.
Yes, Belle had been the woman he referred to in response to Yankers' question all those years ago, although at the time it had been half in jest.
At the time he and Belle had been friends for about three years, since they first met at a bar in Glasgow.
Ian had sat down at the counter and ordered his drink before he'd noticed the woman sitting next to him. A pretty thing about a decade and a half younger then his own thirty five years, her loose blonde curls reaching her shoulders, her soft and slightly cultured voice lilting with a strong Australian accent and a tired, world-weary look about her.
As he watched she turned toward him – perhaps sensing his secuintary – and the most startling pair of eyes that he'd ever seen locked with his. One sky blue, the other bottle green.
After a few stunned seconds he'd started a conversation with her, she answering back with a relieved smile that, at the time he hadn't understood. They had talked for hours at the bar, both ignoring the barkeep's hostile glare at their loitering. He came back the next day to find her there again, she striking up a conversation with him that time. It had taken three more meetings for him to learn that she was a prostitute, and he hadn't cared one lick. After all Ian hadn't been looking for sex let alone a girl to call his own, no more then Belle had been seeking out a customer. Just someone to talk to. Someone that they could call a friend.
What Ian had cared about, what made his blood boil, was how others looked at her. How their faces took on a look of contempt and men's eyes followed her and the less then polite treatment she received more often then not.
As if Belle were dirty. Worthless, stupid, and damaged goods.
As if she had no respect and was eager to spread her legs for any leecheus bastard that wanted her.
As if she was not worth the effort it required to be courteous, to receive polite answers and not get turned away from the local shops, to have her existence aknowdgled or her well being inquired after.
As if she was a prostitute because she wanted to be.
As if Belle wasn't one of the kindest, smartest, and least undamaged person he had ever meet, despite her occupation.
As if she didn't shudder when she sensed men's eyes on her, didn't hold her head up with all the pride of a lioness and walk with a quiet dignity befitting a Queen.
As if she never had to hold onto the sides of buildings to keep upright as finely dressed woman and police passed her by, as if she never curbed her naturally sharp tongue nor was touched by the fact that his fists more often then not landed on their mark.
As if she hadn't been fired from her job and turned to it out of desperation after quitting school in order to pay the numerous debts that her deceased father had left her.
As if her smile wasn't false and she didn't stumble into his flat in the dead of night with bruises on her face and arms, as if she didn't shove her fingers down her throat to get rid of the mens' seed and continuing even when the only thing that came back up was stomach bile.
It was that that lead to him calling Belle his wife, just to lessen her deplorable treatment. It had become a kind of joke between them, his "ten dollar wife".
Ian wasn't too sure when it had stopped being a joke and taken on a note of sincerity.
When he started to become jealous as opposed to simply angry when Belle became the focus of mens' attentions.
When Belle had taken to all but living at his flat and he'd known everything there was to know about her and he still hungered for more.
When fighting with her felt more personal then it should have and he caught himself wishing to stroke her hair and realized that he would lay the world at her feet just to make her smile.
When he began to walk across that bridge between friendship and love.
No. He wasn't sure when all that came about. All he was sure of, by the time he was in that camp, was that when his heart had stopped beating as Belle kissed him before he'd shipped out was that Belle had done it because she had wanted to, and that if anything was to keep him sane through this it would be thoughts of her.
That was what kept him sane, as it turned out. The dreams, thoughts, and images of her were what caused him to cling to what felt like the very last edges of his sanity.
Ian had honestly thought that Belle would have forgotten him, that she would have grieved for a while before moving on and finding someone else. He wouldn't have blamed her if she had, for five years was a long time to hold out hope for someone that was, in all likelihood, dead. Especially when Belle hadn't really been his girl to start with.
When Ian finally set foot on Scottish soil after spending eight months recovering in a remote Japanese hospital and saw Belle waiting for him, when she practically flew into his arms and he held her so tightly it was a wonder her ribs didn't break, as he listened to her half incoherent stream of words – are you alright what happened I got pregnant but I lost it and I didn't care because I didn't want it and oh god what did they do to you Ian why didn't you write I paid off the bills and got into school but they kicked me out because they learned what I used to do so I'm a waitress now and I love you you stupid bloody bastard - he knew that she hadn't given up. Knew that she had been his girl for a long time now, regardless of how long it had taken him – and perhaps her - to realize it.
After he'd made it home Belle had been the one who'd made living bearable.
She was the one who held him as he cried, who made him talk about what had happened to him.
To them.
About what he had done and whom he'd betrayed and the monster that he had felt himself becoming.
She was the person whom made him get up in the morning, reminded him to eat actual food instead of plain rice or bland oatmeal.
Belle hadn't said a word when he couldn't bring himself to sleep on the bed, instead taking some blankets and curling up next to him on the floor, and she was the one whom made sure that he didn't go by the way of his father and fall into the bottle.
Who didn't try to coddle him and had no problem yelling at him when he was being an ass.
Who hadn't left even when she caught him making deep groves along the inside of his arm with a butter knife. He hadn't been intending to kill himself, and Ian had told her as much after her screams had died down and the blood flow had been halted.
It was just that he had discovered about…. about two years ago that the sight of his blood made things… better. His pain slipped away and his dark thoughts came to a halt, his surroundings faded into a fog and he stopped hearing the cries of death inside his head. He became numb, and for a few seconds or a couple blessed minutes everything just… stopped. He'd needed it to stop. And now, here at home with the woman he loved thousands of miles away from that living hell nothing would stop.
The words –Take care of my boys, Ian. You stupid wee boy.
The images – woman bound by rope lead into the cabin, their bodies just another spoil of war. Heads impaled upon bamboo pikes, flies and birds already feasting on the flesh of what hours ago had been living men.
The sounds – the soft whoosh of the ax swinging through the air as another tree is cut, the chocking gasps and echoing grunts from a prisoner as water is pumped into their stomach and lungs.
The sensations – his stomach clenches into a painful fist, rejecting the twice daily maggot and rice gruel that is his lone form of substance. The sweat trickles down his back, itching and burning as it seeps into the open sores and cuts that mar it and he can't wait to stick that sword into that Nip bastards stomach.
All of it and more circled endlessly inside of his mind, echoing and doubling back and shouting one second and whispering the next until he'd felt half insane.
Until he'd made them stop.
No, surprisingly Belle hadn't left him after that, hadn't backed away nor committed him to the asylum. All she had done was look faintly sick, silently crying as she listened and pressed a towel on his wounds. She'd hugged him and swore that they would find a way to make it stop and had spent the next two hours getting rid of anything sharp including the dishes and silverware and his great-grandmothers china tea set.
Ian was glad that she had, because, secretly, he wasn't sure that one day the wound would be so deep that he'd bleed out before the flow could be stopped…. and that it wouldn't have been an accident.
Belle was the one that defended him when people made comments about his behavior, how he flinched at loud noises and was liable to break their arm if they touched him unexpectedly, how he became sick at the most seemingly ordinary of smells. As they stared at the thick and jagged scars covering his arms, horrified as they pulled their children away for anyone that intentionally harmed themselves must be insane.
When he was labeled as weak. A coward.
A yellow-bellied coward and a no good whore, a match made in heaven wouldn't you say – the sound of the mans' jaw cracking underneath his knuckles was just the start, and by the time Ian was pulled off the person below him was a mass of liquid red and more broken bones and mangled meat the human flesh, for Ian hadn't been seeing the man. He'd seen every man that had touched Belle, that bruised her body and caused her tears while following her with their eyes. He'd been seeing the guards that had killed his Colonel, that had beaten them like dogs while working them like mules in between degrading them and making them dig their own graves and paralyzing them with shovels while nailing them to a makeshift cross.
Belle was the woman whom loved him in spite of that, who kissed the scars littering his body as they made love and whom married his completely unworthy ass three and a half years latter despite his frequent mood swings that caused him to loose more jobs then he managed to keep. It was she who encouraged him to retire from the army and move them to their favorite city, Benbecula , where they could start fresh. Where no one knew them and she could go back to school while he stood half a chance at landing a decent job and making a good impression on the neighbors. Where Belle could become a Nurse and, if his credentials were good enough, Ian might be accepted to Lews Castle College as a Biology professor.
Which is how Ian came to be here, sitting on the edge of their bed in their modest sized home that overflows with hundreds and hundreds of books and the six tea sets safely resting in the cupboard. Their small white dog is asleep downstairs in the study where all his papers rest and the rose embroided quilt is laying halfway on the floor while his wife lies half awake beside him even though she has just pulled a double Nursing shift at the hospital and should be dead to the world.
She is not however, for moments latter he feels the mattress dip as Belle moves to kneel behind him. Her hands slide down his forearms, the pads of her fingers naturally following the paths of his scars until she reaches his hands and Ian automatically interlaces their fingers, his thumb rubbing her knuckles in silent apology for waking her. Belle presses herself against him, the smooth softness of her breasts and stomach pleasantly familiar against his back as she kisses his shoulder before lightly resting her chin on it.
No apology is necessary. Not for this.
Minutes pass but neither make the slightest movement, even though Ian knows Belles' knees must be beginning to cramp and her chin is jabbing uncomfortably into his flesh.
They are both waiting. Waiting for the images to become faint enough for sleep, for Ian's' eyes to see the wall in front of him and not the memories that dance through his thoughts, for the residual fear to leave his body.
It will take a while. Weather a few minutes or a half hour Ian has no idea. But happen it will, and when it does they will lay back down on the bed. Belle will curl herself against his side and her startlingly beautiful, opposite hued eyes will close as Ian wraps his arm around her. After a few seconds Belle will tuck her head into the crook of his neck, and soon Ian will fall asleep with the golden curls of his ten dollar wife tickling his nose.