It's been an entire year — a whole year since she left the FBI — left me.
She had been ill that faithful morning so I had insisted that she stayed at home.
"The world will survive one day without you," I said cupping her cheeks and placing a gentle kiss to her temple.
"If it doesn't we'll know who to blame," she says, biting back a grin. I should've known something was amidst the night before.
She was different — distant from me, from everyone else.
If I had known that she'd plan to leave me one day I would've held on a little tighter, loved her a little harder then maybe...maybe she'd still be here.
She would've already been my wife.
Jane was all quiet that night, not like her at all, miss chatter herself. I'm used to the long tales, the rambling, the quick wit. She spoke before I even got the chance.
"I love you." There was something in the way she said it that bothered me, that wasn't Jane. She usually wasn't so direct. How could I have been so dumb to start a romance with everything going on?
I shake my head, wrapping my fingers around the warm mug.
"It's been a year —" Doctor Borden says, snapping me out of my thoughts —"let her go, now" he added gently.
I was filled with my own darkness and depression which I still attempted to file away and forget, like a bad grade or an overgrown nail. Alcohol had become my very bestfriend; my only coping mechanism — the only thing that helped me through the pain I felt after she left.
We were happy together. We had a life together.
Our love was real, I know it was. I felt it in my bones.
I saw it in her eyes; the way she looked at me, the way we made love every night.
How could three years together be all a lie? I refused to believe that the time we spent together meant nothing to her.
I scrubbed my face and glanced up him. He offered me a gentle smile and a slight nod to let me know that he was here for him.
Borden had always been a great pal, a great friend.
"It's not that easy," I said, leaning back in my chair.
There were days I woke and my memories weighed heavy. Being Assistant Director now meant I didn't need an excuse to work my pain out.
Everyday for 6 months, I'd get so drunk in the local bar that my sister would have to get a last minute babysitter to watch Sawyer while she came and babysat her older brother. Her pathetic older brother who couldn't get over his girlfriend.
Everyone I ever loved left. Why did it come as such a shock when Jane left too?
"I loved her — still love her" I said quietly.
"I love her," I repeated. I often asked myself what I would do if she suddenly came back. The sensible thing to do would be to turn her away; hurt her the way she's hurt me but I couldn't — wouldn't do that to her.
At one point she loved me and I needed to know what changed and why she felt like she couldn't talk to me?
A photograph, that was all it took for the tears to burst Kurt's dam of restraint. He clutched the solid wooden frame tight in his hand, able to see a ghostly reflection of his face in the thin sheen of glass that covered it. He looked past her own dreary eyes and stared upon her face that had been caught in a moment of perfection. It was the happiest memories that hurt the worst, they were the ones that cut him deepest. He focused in on her eyes, they were glistening with the twinkle of laughter that once he loved. Now, they laughed at him. They reminded him of what he had lost. He clutched the frame tight, pressing it hard to his chest wishing to feel her head resting upon them one last time. It was in that moment Kurt realised he no longer knew how he felt. He was numb, yet somehow in agony. He longed to be free of her, yet he wanted her back more than he'd ever wanted anything.
He had experienced pain before.
But nothing amounted to this.
He could neither hide or run or fight them. His memories were indeed his worst enemy and the thing that would most likely destroy him.
"Kurt?" Sarah said, her voice cutting through his thoughts and dragging him back to reality.
He wipes away the tears that had fallen from his eyes and unto the picture he clutched, angrily.
"Hey," he says softly, his back still to her. She didn't need to see his face to know how tortured he was — his body language told her all she needed to know.
Sarah walks up behind her brother and hugged him tightly.
He was once so happy for nearly four years with a woman he'd come to love more than life itself. I always thought he was being dramatic when he said he couldn't live without her but I see now that he really can't. He won't let her go — couldn't let her go.
Jane and Sarah had gotten really close over the years. They were practically sisters but Jane never — not even once — mentioned that she was unhappy with the life she now had. Things were great at work, she was finally an agent at the FBI and her and Kurt had been more in love than ever. Where did it all go wrong? What happened between these two that ripped them apart so badly that Kurt was still burning?
I peered over his shoulder and saw the wooden frame clutched tightly between his fingers. Their house was practically a Jane museum. He had more pictures of her than they had together. Some pictures were posed while the majority of it was just him catching her off guard.
"You're beautiful lost in your world," he'd tell her every time.
Kurt is in so much pain his complexion is ashen. His natural golden skin has sunken in tone to something so lifeless it scares me just to look at him. His eyes close and he sucks himself into a deeper place to cope. All I can do is hold him tight. It barely seems enough.
"You'll be okay. Just hold on"
Eleven o'clock morphs into twelve and then one. The time trickles by, marked only by those changing glowing numerals.
My mind is blank; where there should be dreams is a heavy blackness. My eyes are as stationary as the silhouette of my bedside lamp, which is where they rest. When the sallow glow of the streetlamp behind it becomes white, I know my night is over.
My mind flickers to the cupboard and the sleeping pills the doctor prescribed. I don't want them, I don't want chemicals. I close my eyes and they almost sting, open too long I guess. After some moments I recall an old russian tale Jane used to tell, and let it mull around my head for a bit.
God, I miss her. It's been a year but the sheets still smell like her, sometimes I even smell her favourite lotion at random moments.
I was broken now, shattered really, robbed early of the tape and glue necessary to put my soul back together. My heart, poorly stapled shut, was beating hard but without purpose, skin stretched across my aching muscles like a worn canvas. My mind was like a lost man at sea, desperate and starving for some reason to live. Desperate for a memory, good, warm, welcoming, one she could smile to.
I connected to a part of her, others could never feel. I saw a part of her soul she never wanted to let out of the bag. I touched her and saw her reaction, beautiful and raw. For those moments she was more real than the blood in my own veins, and I felt her like the beating of my own heart. The bond we had forged was still molten when she pulled away, too nascent to resist your urge to hide once more. I called for her, held out my hands and let my face become wet with untold tears, my world became blacker than it ever was before, darker for your absence, loneliness crippling my every thought. My lungs struggle for breath against ribs of stone and my feet have lost their wanderlust. Before I met her my heart was soft, with her it became strong and vibrant, now it is simply broken.
"Where did I go wrong, Jane?" I asked quietly.
"Tell me what I did to you that made you pack up and leave me?" I asked louder this time, throwing my pillow against the wall.
To come so close to pure love and lose it so violently is something no medication can heal. I held that girl the first day she came out of that bag, a gift from God above, a new angel for Earth; for me.
There is no graveside I can mourn by, there isn't even a coffin to bury. Fragments of her lie in the rubble of what was once our home.
I knew what I was doing wasn't healthy. I knew I needed to sleep, to eat but I couldn't. I felt hopeless — worthless to everyone around me. If only I had loved her enough she might've still been here. We would've been celebrating our four years anniversary in another month.
I knew when it started it would break me. I knew that there was too much below deck not to shatter my carefully laid floor when it came up. Breaking was hard, recovery almost impossible, but of my journey I am making the best map I possibly can. Drawing it out the way I do helps, swimming in the fine rum daily.
They say the pain dulls with time, and that things will get better. But how can things be better when the reason the pain isn't as bad anymore, is because I've forgotten?
Over time, the memory of your presence would have escaped my mind. I'd no longer see your face in strangers, and the things we once shared would no longer bring tears to my eyes. If getting past the pain means forgetting you, then I choose suffer my entire life.
A/N: So this happened. I guess I was feeling down for no specific reason and had the brilliant idea of making Kurt go through it with me. I'm so sorry Kurt. :))
Please let me know what you think about this chapter that got a little too sad.