"Sydney."
Her back is to him, and she' s shaking. The sobs that are racking her small frame are quiet, almost soundless, but he's slowly waking up anyway.
She's sitting at the edge of his- their- bed, body bent forward, while he's lying on the other side of it. He would still be soundly asleep if it weren't for his supernaturally strong hearing and for the fact that he's become positively more jumpy over the course of the last few months.
He moves until he's in a sitting position and then touches her bare shoulder lightly. When she shies away from his touch, he knows for sure that something is wrong.
"Are you crying?" he asks cautiously.
"I' m not," she replies, even though he can hear her sniffling. She raises her hands at her face and wipes furiously.
"Why are you-"
"I'm not! I'm not crying," she repeats loudly, her voice angry. At him or at herself, he can't really say. He can feel himself frowning. He's been doing that a lot lately. He presses his mouth on her shoulder tenderly, placing the softest of kisses there.
"Lying is a sin, Sage."
"I don't care," she chokes out, and then laughs bitterly through her tears. "Not anymore."
"Tell me what's wrong", he all but pleads her.
"As if you don't already know," she bites out. He stares at her bewildered. She was just fine before they went to sleep -as fine as one can be after everything she's gone through, anyway. She'd let him cuddle with her on the couch, they'd watched a movie and she had even laughed at some of the crappy jokes. To him, this had seemed like a whole lot of progress. But apparently it's not.
"Look at me, Adrian," she cries out so suddenly, he startles violently. She turns around completely so that she's facing him, and her red eyes almost undo him right then and there.
"I am looking at you," he replies cautiously, trying to understand what the hell is going on in her head right now.
"What do you see?", she asks forcefully.
"I see you," he says, trying to understand where she's going with this.
"Do you really? Because I certainly don't."
"What- what do you mean?", he asks, completely taken aback.
"I feel like a different person," she says in a small voice. "I'm constantly crying, I have nightmares every single night. I- I feel useless. I feel like a burden. And it's killing me. The crying, the weakness- it's killing me. I've become a hollow shell of myself. What good am I to you while I'm like this? What good am I to anyone?", she whispers almost desperately. His heart aches for her.
"We've been through this before, Sydney. You don't have to do this anymore. Stop beating yourself up over the fact that someone tortured you, for god's sake," he says, voice trembling slightly towards the end. She opens her mouth to speak, but he's not finished talking yet. "I know you were used to taking care of everyone for so long. In Utah and in Russia and in Palm Springs, you were always the responsible one. The strong one. But here, with me," he reaches out and gently touches her cheek with his knuckles, "you don't have to be. It's alright if you let yourself relax for a while."
"I can't. I don't feel relaxed. I feel messed up. I feel... broken," she says quietly. "I don't know how to live with myself when I'm like this. Helpless." She swallows hard. "Weak." Tears spill from under her lowered lashes. Her chest shakes with every hard breath she takes as her crying picks up again. "S-see? I'm c-crying again," she heaves through a sob. "I'm a-always, always crying. I don't d-do that. You know I-I don't." Her tears keep tracing paths down her cheeks, and she looks at him with a surprising fierceness in her eyes, urging him to understand.
"Sage, come on. This is nonsense. You're not weak. You're the strongest woman I've ever known. This isn't weakness. You giving up would be weak. You haven't, have you? I can see you fighting. Even now, after all this, you're still fighting."
She only cries harder. He wants to comfort her, but he's not sure how. He wants to cry, too.
"I'm making everything so difficult," she finally says through tears. "Can't you see that? Every-everything would be so much easier without me."
Her words send stabs of pain in his heart. She couldn't be farther from the truth. How can she be so smart and so blind at the same time? "I don't want easy, don't you understand that? I only want you. You laughing, you smiling, you crying your eyes out, it doesn't matter. As long as I'm with you," he declares softly, "I don't care about easy. Easy is boring, anyway. And we're anything but," he smiles slyly.
"I want to believe you so bad," she replies lowly, uncertainly.
"Then do. Because I mean every word."
She turns away from him again. "I just hate you seeing me like this."
"What, crying?"
"Yes, crying. I hate crying. I hate crying in front of you so much."
"Well, you shouldn't. Look, I know you think you have to be strong for the both of us, but you forget that I've changed, too. I don't need to be protected at the cost of your own mental health. I'm nothing like the man I was when you first met me. I'm not a child, either."
She makes a sound of protest and angles her body towards him once again. "I never said you were. Adrian-"
"Sydney, please, hear me out," he says pleadingly. " I know that crying in front of people makes you uncomfortable, because I know you. Better than anyone. And you have to trust me when I tell you than none of this can make me think any different of you. You're still my amazingly smart, insanely good-looking, strong, motivated girlfriend. You can cry in front of me as much as you want. It won't change anything. I'm not going anywhere. I swear."
She lurches forward so suddenly, she practically tackles him on the bed. She's featherlight-heavy on top of him, since she's so much thinner than she's ever been in all the time he's known her. She wraps her limbs around him and then promptly bursts in tears. Hard, painful sobs and long, high-pitched wails against his solid chest. It feels good. Cathartic. Like all the pain and shame she's been bottling up since she was captured are finally finding a way out.
"Shhh, let it out, let it all out," he murmurs comfortingly, wrapping her up in his arms. Small hiccups interrupt her crying from time to time, and he can feel his shirt getting progressively wetter from her tears, but he can't bring himself to care. He combs his hands through her hair and lets her cry next to him until her sobs turn to whimpers and hitched breaths. They stay like this for a long time.
Finally, he pulls her up until her face is only a breath away from his and then wipes away her tears with his thumbs.
"Feel any better?", he asks, the softest smile on his face. To his relief, she smiles back, as softly, as lovingly.
"Much," she replies. She thinks for a moment before she says her next words. "I think it was one of those things that you didn't know you needed until they actually happen, you know?" Her voice is already closing up because of all the crying she's done tonight. It's softer than ever, slightly scratching her throat on its way out. To Adrian, it sounds like the most beautiful melody. She sniffles and coughs a little, clearing her throat. "Thank you," she says, and the happiness the simple words cause him is undescribable.
"Anything to help you, Sage. Anytime," he tells her honestly. He knows he would do anything for the girl in his arms.
A/N: Thank you so much for each and every review! You're all wonderful! (And of course feel free to leave constructive criticism.) (The pacing in this chapter is somewhat off, but I just couldn't get it right. Might be due to my constant lack of sleep lately. Or not.) See you in Ch5!
ETA: Thank you, CherrySlushLover, for pointing out the accidentally italicised text. :)
