Author's Note: See End Notes for more.
She dreams of sweet things, of half-hidden smiles and faint touches.
She dreams of dark things, of crimson and gunpowder smell.
These are the things that wake her in the deep night, struggling for breath and slick with feverish sweat. No comforting light can be found in her room, no bedside lamp, not a single bright bulb. She prefers the shadow now, it wraps her in a chill blanket of imagined protection, contrary to popular belief. She doesn't want to see the scattered papers littering her haphazard desk; she doesn't want to see the reminders of that moment which laid her low.
Bandages and gauze, antibiotic bottles and topical ointments. They sit mockingly and alone on a table near her bed, within reach but far enough away they don't smother her with their presence. She likes the dark because she can imagine her nightmares are fiction of the mind, things not real in her past and so readily apparent in her now.
Her therapist says she has post-traumatic stress, and her doctor tells her she needs rest in abundance. Don't they know she has time for neither? She cannot afford to simply sit around doing so little, when there is a mountain of research and data and theories to assault at the nearest possible moment. She is a doctor, too, the doctor if she is honest, a person do devoted to her craft that she nearly died a dozen times over for it.
And how did she actually die?
Because she did die. For a brief few moments, she was nothing but cooling flesh. An empty vessel that once smiled and laughed and for a heartbeat, loved. And that was what killed her, in the end. She couldn't say what she wanted, couldn't act on what was there, and in that small exchange of words, she had seen the potential for more than just the little things. She had been happy when she left him, and that distracted her, cost her a misstep in her game.
And so she felt Death coming, and knew love could have saved her, just as it had cursed her.
So she sits shaking now, holding herself because there is no one else to do it. He wants to comfort her, he wants to wrap her and keep her safe, but that isn't her. She doesn't need the comfort, or so she tells herself. She doesn't need his distracting touch and the longing in his eyes. She needs to focus on her new cure, and her mission, not his face and his hands.
So she dreams of dark things, of crimson and gunpowder smell.
And she dreams of sweet things, of half-hidden smiles and faint touches.
She is cold and lonely and strong, but she doesn't know if she is strong enough to keep him from taking away the dark things.
Author's End Notes: Well, I am back, it seems. At least enough to fix the disaster of the new season. And as always, new and old suggestions are welcome. I will reiterate though that I do not write marriage or children into my stories.