"Inventing the Future"
Author's Note: You guys could probably see this coming. Everyone has the occasional 'last straw' moment, and even the most reserved person is capable of having one heck of a meltdown. So, you've been warned. Also, this chapter carries a trigger warning for blood and a self-inflicted but accidental injury. In short, punching the wall is bad.
"Chapter 14: Fallen"
Never taking her eyes off the door, Meredith waited until she was alone to let out a sigh and rub her face. She knew better than to get in the line of fire; an accidental injury after all of this would just be the icing on the cake! And it would probably be worse for him than it would be for her.
Meredith wasn't even sure if Jaming would want to be seen, but she couldn't leave until she was sure he would be okay. He had been so hopeful. So much was riding on the hopes that he would succeed. He had been counting on it. And now those hopes were all but destroyed. In a very real sense, he had crashed right along with his platform.
The sounds went on for longer than Meredith expected, but in time the night was totally and eerily quiet. She waited for ten seconds. Twenty. And she heard nothing more from within. She got to her feet and cautiously approached the garage, putting an ear to the door. She couldn't even hear him breathing. She knocked softly, and waited.
Nothing.
"Jaming?"
There was the soft noise of debris shifting, as if someone who had been sitting on the floor was changing their position a little in response, but that was it. The light wasn't even on, probably broken by either the platform's rampage or Jaming's, and Meredith dug a flashlight out of her pack. Clicking it on, she tried the doorknob and found that he hadn't locked it. "I'm coming in, okay?"
Meredith waited a second more, received no response, and tentatively pushed the door open. She had some trouble here, because the overturned work bench was half in front of it, but she could see that at least he hadn't intentionally barricaded himself in. Her breath caught in her throat as her flashlight's dim illumination revealed what almost appeared to be the aftermath of a tornado.
The failed platform lay overturned across the bed in the corner, covering most of it. Tools, metal scraps, and tiny bits of broken glass littered the floor, and one of Jaming's shelves had been knocked clear off the wall and lay at the opposite end of the garage, completely split in half. She couldn't even see Jaming, but the soft sound of a muffled sob gave away his location.
The heavy work table, which normally sat in the center of the room, was overturned in a similar manner that the bench had been. And, shining her flashlight directly at it, Meredith could just make out the familiar blue spikes of hair poking over the edge of the table. The shadow it cast on the far wall sort of resembled an artichoke. "There you are..."
The voice that answered her was low and miserable, hoarse from too much yelling. "Go away..."
"Are you hurt?"
She heard him draw in a hitching breath, and his voice rose a bit in pitch if not in volume. "I said go away. I don't want you to see me like this."
Meredith stood in a state of indecision, torn between honoring his wishes or going against them. She wasn't sure if he was physically okay or if he had injured himself, and she didn't quite trust his state of mind. After seeing him take such a crushing blow, she wanted to be sure it was actually safe to leave him alone.
As she stood and considered, the sounds of his erratic breathing never ceased, and against her better judgment she carefully picked her way through the obstacle course of sharp objects and made her way over to him.
As the beam from Meredith's flashlight fell on Jaming he turned to avoid it. He sat huddled in a ball, hiding his face in his arms. His knuckles were swollen and bloody, and Meredith realized he must have vented his anger by punching something. 'What has he done to himself?'
And as she got over her shock, she saw that he had clenched his hands into fists, having realized she was still there.
"Jaming...if I come closer...you're not going to hit me, are you?"
"How could you think that?" he demanded, not raising his head.
"Because...frankly, you're scaring me." She used the side of her foot to sweep a space clean for kneeling, and settled down beside him.
"I'm sorry..." he mumbled, burrowing his face deeper into his arms, trembling in misery. "I screw everything up..."
"You don't screw everything up," she gently brushed back the blue spikes of his hair, almost afraid to touch him even after he indicated that he wouldn't lash out at her. "You don't..."
"I do too!" He could barely get the words out, and kept having to hold his breath as he tried to bring himself under control. "You and Pau could have been hurt. If it got out before the roof closed, the town could have...I did it again. Damn it, I did it again!"
"Jaming..." She tried again, but he went on as if she hadn't spoken.
"Can't you see? No matter what I do, I'll...I'll never be a...I tried so hard to make things right, and I just can't!" Jaming was yelling again, but he hardly had the voice for it now. The meltdown was still in progress, and he was hyperventilating almost uncontrollably. "The one time I do get it right, and-and-and it's when I'm...when I'm working for him! I'm a failure...a g-goddamn failure!"
Meredith said nothing and wrapped her arms around him, careful not to touch his hands, and gently pressed the side of his head against her shoulder.
And, far too miserable at this point to care about his dignity, he cried. Hard. Instead of pulling away from her embrace, he leaned into it and allowed himself to be comforted. He let her run her hand through his coarse, spiky hair. It felt nice.
It was a good long while before he quieted down again, and after a time Meredith noticed something. She thought she could smell something faint and coppery. It took her a moment to realize that what she smelled was blood, and she remembered how torn up his knuckles were. Jaming had made no attempt to sit back, and he seemed fully prepared to sit there indefinitely. He was still awake, she was sure of it, but he simply did not want to move.
"Jaming?" Meredith asked when his breathing had been normal for several minutes, not wanting to set him off again.
"Hm?"
"Your hands are bleeding. We need to take care of it."
Jaming finally sat back a little, and he realized that he had bled on her! "Oh, I'm sorry..."
"Pff, this shirt was due for the rag bag anyway. Come on, up you get," Slipping a hand under his elbow, she helped him to his feet and asked, "Do you have a first aid kit?"
"Not anymore..."
Meredith spotted the dented, metal box lying pinned under the edge of the platform, and wondered disjointedly how in the world it had managed to end up like that. Then, deciding that it didn't matter, she shrugged. "Okay, no problem. I've got one back home. You think you can climb a ladder?"
"Yes, unless I want to spend the night in here..." Jaming said, then hurriedly clarified when he realized that it didn't sound quite right. "I mean, I'll have to climb my own ladder, so climbing yours won't be...a problem." Jeez, no matter how he put it, it sounded wrong! Still, he hadn't been up in her house before, and if he hadn't been so emotionally wrung out, the thought of it would have made him extremely nervous. As it was, he simply felt tired and numb.
Jaming let her lead the way, and he kept his eyes firmly on the rungs in front of him instead of looking up. She wasn't wearing a skirt, but he didn't want to get distracted and slip.
Soon he stood inside a tree house very similar to his own, though furnished differently, and tried not to bleed on her floor. He liked what she had done with the place, though he didn't feel like he quite belonged in it. There was a bed, a table and two chairs, a small dresser, and a book shelf that practically groaned beneath the weight of Meredith's books. There was a small lamp on the dresser, which Meredith switched on, but the room was already dimly lit by the colored holiday lights she had strung up along the walls.
His own tree house dwelling was fairly plain. Since he spent most of his time in his garage anyway, at least before this latest disaster, he saw no reason to smarten up his home for company he would never have.
Lord, his hands hurt! All of him hurt, really. He wasn't used to a lot of physical exercise, and he had given himself quite a workout. His muscles were already complaining, and he knew that they would practically be screaming at him in the morning.
There was an audible 'plop!', and a drop of scarlet fluid seemed to stare accusingly up at him from the floorboards. So much for not bleeding on her floor!
Meredith realized he was still standing, and she nodded to the table as she got some soap and water ready. "Go ahead and sit down. I'll just be a minute."
He hooked the toe of his boot on the leg of one of the chairs and pulled it back from the table a bit, and obediently sat down. He moved to rest his forehead in his hands, but saw that he had blood all over his palms. The wounds were only on the knuckles, so this surprised him a little. And it made his head feel a bit swimmy.
When Meredith came over with the medical supplies, she found him with his head resting on the table in the crook of his arm. He opened his eyes when she sat down, then closed them again. His blue skin had taken on an ashen sort of pallor, and she frowned. "Feeling sick?"
"No, just dizzy."
She took one of his hands, turning it so that she could inspect the palm and the wrist, and she nodded in private relief when she saw that the blood only had one source. However, when she got a really good look at his knuckles, she gasped softly. The skin over all four of his knuckles was scraped away, and there were even tiny pieces of glass and splinters of wood sticking out of the cuts. And the other one looked just as bad! "Ooh...that must hurt like a bitch."
Normally, he would chide her playfully over her use of language. It was sort of a running gag with them, one they both took part in, but he wasn't in a particularly joking mood and merely shrugged.
Opening the first aid kit, Meredith took out a pair of tweezers. She also took a napkin from the napkin holder on the table and laid it out between them. "I really don't want to hurt you, Jaming...but this is going to hurt."
"I know," he mumbled, still keeping his eyes closed.
Meredith bit her lip and got to work, carefully removing the glass and splinters from his torn skin and depositing them onto the napkin. It took longer than she thought it would, but he didn't react until it came time to clean the area with soap and water.
He grunted softly and flinched, then remained absolutely still, willing himself to not react like that again. Hitting the wall had hurt and had resulted in him using language that would make a sailor blush, but this stung!
"Do you think they're broken?" she asked him, "Can you move them okay?"
Well, he had climbed the ladder without a problem, hadn't he? Instead of pointing that out, though, Jaming flexed his hand a few times. "Not broken."
She nodded, and when she was satisfied that the wounds were clean she slathered them with ointment, covered them with a non-adhesive gauze pad, and used a length of bandage to wrap his hand. "There. One down...one to go."
Jaming groaned before he could stop himself, and slowly raised his head. He wasn't dizzy anymore, but he sure as hell felt guilty. He watched her get to work on his other hand, and shame engulfed him like a rising tide. That look of worry and sadness was on his behalf, and it was his fault. Because he couldn't control himself, look at what she now had to do! It was things like this that made him love her, and made him hate himself. She shouldn't have to clean up after him all the time!
"I'm...such a burden to you..."
"That's funny...I thought something similar after you carried me out of the cave."
Jaming blinked a few times, then lowered his head. He had no tears left, but his eyes stung just the same. "That was different. What you did then was selfless. What I did was throw a tantrum like a three-year-old. You shouldn't have to do this. I'm sorry."
Meredith shook her head, and gave him a gentle but firm command. "Stop."
Jaming shut his mouth, and raised his startled eyes to meet hers.
She stared at him, her eyes still soft, but completely uncompromising. "You took care of me when I needed it. And you're going to let me take care of you. It's what we do. So get used to it, and stop beating yourself up. The walls, too, for that matter."
At this, Jaming finally cracked the tiniest of smiles and shook his head. Gods, he loved this woman.