Title: Hands
Author: AllOverTheWorld
Author's Note: It's late and I'm tired but this idea popped into my head and I knew I had to write it down. It's not edited so please forgive any and all errors, they are mine and mine alone. Enjoy.
Everyday I look at my hands and they serve as a constant reminder of what he did to me, then again that's exactly what he wanted. It is a rare occasion that I go a day without thinking about him and everything that transpired between us. Most day's I'll be sitting at my office, struggling through some pile of paper work or other and my eyes just seem to gravitate towards the mess of thin, stark white lines that criss cross the palms of both of my hands.
I remember the fear mixed with agony that coursed through my body on that night. I remember the feeling of the scalpel being traced across my jaw line, being traced along my neck. The metal was cold, almost a relief for the stifling heat of that basement, sewer, whatever. His voice was like melted butter, as he said my name and it is his voice I hear at night when I wake up, sweaty, terrified and alone from my nightmares.
Except I'm not alone any more.
My hands still serves as a constant reminder of what I went through but now, now, when I look down at the cross hatching of scars I think of how she kisses then gently when we're making love. How she always reminds me, as Korsak did, that no one could break me unless I let them. For a long time I was embarrassed to wake up, with the tears streaming down my face and my hands flailing for my gun. Then I was worried I might shoot her amidst my own, self induced panic. Finally, now, on the occasion that I do have a nightmare I am neither embarrassed nor afraid I might hurt my love but instead I allow her to take me up into her arms. I allow her to protect me in the way only she could, and while she may not be able to shoot a gun (not yet anyway) I still feel the most protected around her.
As we sit there, or lie there, in our bed, with her hands running gently through my hair as I let the tears fall down onto her hundred dollar pajama top, I know that she will never judge me. She will never reject me because I didn't clear a basement properly and got hit over the head by a two by four. She doesn't think I am any less weak or less brave because of the nightmares that plague me. In fact she tells me they make me stronger.
That confused me for a long time until I finally decided to ask her what she meant and I remember her explaining it to me. When she said it, it was a lot more technical and slightly less philosophical but the long and short of it was something like this:
"Why do you sit here, night in and night out, dealing with me?"
She looked at me for a second and then asked "Where else would I be but with the woman I love?"
I love that statement because I knew, at that moment, that that question was very sincere, anyway, onwards with the explanation:
"I shouldn't be having nightmare's, I'm not five."
She laughs at that, I love her laugh, and then she reaches out with one arm and forces me too look at her "They mean you're not giving up."
"Giving up?" I asked, startled by the lack of technical explanation how I could not control what I dreamt, or something like that.
"You're not letting him control you. You're not letting your fear of him control you. They make you stronger."
I used to hate my hands.
I used to hate what secrets they held, hidden behind a mess of thin white lines.
I used to how people's eyes seemed to drift down to the scars on my hands.
I used to…
I still have nightmares, I probably always will but at least now I have someone who watches my back. I have someone who reminds me that what I went through with Charles Hoyt did not break me. He did not break me because Maura Isles saved me.
Of course Korsak saved me the first time and I saved my self the second time but Maura saved me the third time, the time when she found me sitting in my apartment, hands shaking, tears running down my face and the barrel of my gun pressed firmly into my temple. She saved me then and all of the other times when I am back in that basement with him, when I am unable to escape him or his scalpels. She was there and always will be there.
And that is why I love her.
Thoughts? Comments? Concerns? Questions?
Lemme know what you thought!
Thanks,
AllOverTheWorld