A/N: this particular short story is dark, but near and dear to my heart.
Jane's POV.
Nothing feels real, concrete under your fingers. Everything wavers before your eyes, changes, and people don't mean what they say. You have a sensation that you're floating away. You're a balloon, and you have nothing keeping you close to the earth, to reality, to solid forms. So up, up, up you go but it terrifies you—the fact that you are so disconnected from everything.
You are watching everything but are not actually participating, not able to participate. You feel as though you have a grasp on something and then it slips through your fingers like sand, fading, fading away.
And it's hard to breathe up here. Your lungs are even failing you. You can't seem to get enough air through your nose. Your vision is blurry and changing shape and you can't trust it.
You can't trust anyone. This is how you have felt today. You've been winding down to this all week, getting increasingly worse, the five nights without sleep piling up on top of your chest and making you unable to move or breathe.
You can barely remember going to work today. Maura wasn't there. That fact sticks out in your mind. She hasn't been there the last few days. She's been at some medical conference somewhere and although you have noticed she has called you a few times in the last 24 hours and her texts have gotten increasingly urgent, you're not sure what to respond. You think your brain made you type: I'm fine. I'm good. I'm okay. Your go to responses. But this didn't seem to have made Maura feel better, for you feel your phone vibrate again next to your hip. Why is it so close to you anyways? You chuck it across the room.
You are angry at yourself for doing that. It was the only thing that was half keeping you in the real world. Well, okay, not even half. The light is slipping and the shadows are crawling in.
You lift your head, trying to get up to get your phone. The only thing that makes you want to move is Maura. You can think of no one else. You don't remember your interactions with people today at work. Or yesterday for that matter.
Maura. You look at your clock and it says 4:40. In the afternoon? They must have made you leave work. What did you do? You find only a tiny distant part of you even cares about that.
Maura.
The darkness is invading more and more. Maybe you have shut your eyes, but you can't be sure. It doesn't make much difference lately when they are open or closed. Everything is too harsh either way. And you see figures, haunting shadows. The victims you didn't save, couldn't. The killers who walk barefoot through grass despite your best efforts.
When it gets really bad, Hoyt comes. He comes with his scalpel. Oh God, you can feel your brain moving towards that image, and you can't do anything to stop it. It is a terrible intuitive knowledge, and the fear is already building even before the image takes control in your mind. You need to hold onto something. Anything.
Maura. Maura, Maura. You are chanting her name in your mind. It clashes with Hoyt's. You fight to push his dark one far away from her light form.
Her eyes. Her eyes always help you calm down. But you can't picture them try as you might. And now you are seeing Hoyt's eyes. Dark black holes that you fall down, down into. Into the abyss you've been circling around recently.
For he is the reason you haven't slept the last five nights. The reason why the time in which you do dream a bit—whether it be 15 minutes or half an hour if you're lucky—are filled with him wickedly grinning at you. His grin and his eyes. Those crooked teeth and that skillful hand, never wavering. His nostrils flare as he breathes, sucks in your fear, thriving off of it, living off of it, growing stronger. He has you pinned to the floor, crushing your lungs, your ribs piercing into your heart, ripping it apart.
You scream and your voice echoes in your head, empty threats and words that you know he takes no mind to. No, you are gone! I killed you, you fucking bastard, I killed you.
His chilling voice, his twisted words, are louder. But I'm still here Jane. Right here with you. And the evil is still all around you. It's eating away all the good, taking over. It doesn't matter what you do.
And he is standing on you now. The scalpels digging into your hands penetrate further and further down, dragging you down, down.
You are trying to reach for something, trying to reach but to no avail.
Maura. You reach for Maura. But you fail. Your hands are stuck and useless. You are useless. Useless, useless.
That awful voice again: It's all around you Jane. Evil. And you can't save her.
Maura! you scream in desperation. You won't let anything touch her.
But try as you might all you can feel is Hoyt suffocating you instead of Maura's gentle arms wrapped around you. All you want is Maura. You are crying now. Though you are in Hoyt's world, you are conscious of the tears streaming down your cheeks, the cries emulating from your lips. Worthless. You're worthless.
You just want Maura, Maura, Maura
"Jane!"
That's not Hoyt's voice. It is the antithesis of it. It is the voice of an angel. You don't think it's coming from your head. There are hands pulling at you but they are not harsh and clawing like Hoyt's, but soft and soothing like Maura's. Maura. A little stream of light in the darkness breaks through. The scalpel's hold on your hand loosens a little. Maura.
You feel strong, warm arms wrapping around you. They aren't cold and painful like Hoyt's. They don't press down against you, digging into you. These arms pull you into a secure haven. You smell Maura's lotion. These arms hold you close so you don't float away, further into the darkness of Hoyt's world. They pull you into the sound of your name being whispered, so lovingly, again and again.
Your name sounds like it has been kissed a thousand times over. It doesn't sound torn and broken and dragged through glass like it does when Hoyt says it. Your skin is being rubbed ever so softly, compassion seeping through the fingers instead of hatred.
You feel something press against the side of your neck, your cheek, and it isn't his seething hot and horrid fingers, but soft lips. You are enveloped in warmth, in affection, in a love that radiates on and on. You've felt this before, but never so overpowering. It has come from Maura before, you've felt it sometimes when your eyes have met hers, you've caught a bit of it in your palm. But now it is enveloping all of your senses and your mind, a powerful potion, fighting away the darkness with one giant swoop. All the evil is fading away into it's own hole. You can hear the screams as the nightmare falls in on itself, you can hear Hoyt's scream as he loses control. You press yourself closer in order to hear the heart that beats below you, let that drown out the disintegrating woeful voices. You count the beat. One two three trying to set your own heart to the rhythm, slow it down.
"Maura," you whisper, and you are surprised to hear yourself out of your head.
"Yes, sweetheart, I'm here, Jane. I'm here." Her voice sounds strange—softer and more raw, the sounds rounded out with more love than usual.
"Stay," is all your raspy voice can get out. You wrap your arms around her tighter, clinging to her like your life depends on it.
She is your life you realize. Maura.
"Of course. I'm not going anywhere."
You love how she says it like it is the most certain statement in the world, the way she moves a hand up from your back to run her fingers through your hair, the way she kisses your forehead.
You love the way she hums beneath you, her sound, her words, her touch vibrating within you, through you.
The way you know you love her—the first thing you've been certain of for days.
It would mean a lot to me if you let me know what you thought of this one. A lot of experimental writing, a lot of myself poured into it.
