Eric was having a monster of a nightmare.
He was suffocating from the heat of an invisible fire. "Let me go!" he shouted at Kwame and the men holding him back. He strained against them, the veins in his neck bulging from the effort. "Let me go!"
The shadowy figure of the Ethiopian shaman materialized not far away from him. He raised his hands in the air and Eric saw a baby wriggling and crying.
"No!" he screamed. "Murderer!"
The heat suddenly grew unbearable. Rivulets of sweat started to pour down his face. He was hot, so damn hot. It felt like he was on fire.
A low chanting started and he felt like he was floating. He struggled to hold his ground; struggled to steady his vision. The chanting got louder and he felt the thrum of it vibrate through his body. The shackle-like grip the men had on his body suddenly disappeared and Eric's vision swam as he fell to his knees. He shook his head hard and willed himself to get a grip and regain control of his senses.
His head snapped up as he heard a loud splash and the chanting grew to a crescendo. "No!" he heard himself scream. "Noo!"
He forced himself to his feet, swaying as he did so. God, the pain. So much pain. He felt something wet and sticky on his neck and his fingers came away red with blood. The blood kept flowing, it wouldn't stop.
He made a stumbling run towards the the river. Slow. He was too slow. But right before his eyes, the rushing water disappeared. Flames danced before his eyes: a river of fire.
A baby wailed.
Without a second thought, Eric dove into the flames.
He woke up with a roar, and Jackie almost fell off her chair.
His eyes were glassy and bloodshot and he couldn't get them to focus. His head was swimming and his mouth felt like it had been stuffed with cotton. His back burned. He pushed himself up on one arm and his elbow buckled. It was a feeling he recognized — opium.
"Eric, no, you're gonna hurt yourself. Here, Let me."
He knew that voice. He loved that voice.
"Jackie," he rasped, and his words came out slurred. "No… No drugs."
He made out the vague outline of a slender hand holding a glass of water before him and he took a grateful sip through the straw. He tried to speak again, and this time his voice cooperated.
"No drugs."
He tried to get up again and Jackie slid her arm under him for support. "Eric, please, you need to rest," she whispered.
He shook his head and the room swam again. He nearly brought up what little water he had just drunk. Damn opium.
Jackie laid a hand on his forehead. He was warmer than she would have liked and she was torn as tried to explain it to him.
"You can't, Eric. The burns on your back… They're… very bad. Ebele said the pain will be unbearable without the morphine."
"No."
"Eric—"
His voice was weak and he struggled to string a coherent sentence. "No. I need… I can't… memories," he stumbled over his words. "Can't… keep them back. Too… weak. No."
She understood.
When Ebele brought out the milky liquid an hour later, she shook her head and told her no. Ebele protested, she needed Eric to rest and there was no way he could if he spent all his energy fighting a pain that could be alleviated with the magical effects of morphine.
"Trust Ebele, Miss Jackie. Ah been medicine woman a long time. He been burnt bad. Da pain…" She shook her head gravely. "He needs da opium."
She walked over to the cot where Eric was lying asleep and lifted up a side of the mass of bandages loosely covering his skin. "Look."
Jackie nearly caved. For even to her untrained eye she could see that they were awful and likely excruciating.
"If eet doesn't heal quickly, infection will set in and he may die."
Her heart stopped at Ebele's words and she knew that Ebele wasn't lying. She closed her eyes against the wounds on his back and swallowed hard. Gathering her strength, she shook her head and told Ebele shakily to dump the drug.
"No." She touched Ebele's hand and put Eric's dressings back in place. "I promised him. No."
She drew in an unsteady breath and looked at Ebele. "I want him to take it too, and I'll try to explain it to him again. But unless he tells me otherwise… I won't lose his trust this way."
Ebele looked long and hard at her, but eventually she nodded.
"Eet will not be easy to sit by and do nothing, Miss Jackie," she said and turned away to put the glass vial down on a small table nearby. "But eet will be harder for him. Burns are not easy to recover from."
She sighed and placed a hand on Jackie's shoulder. "Your young man has been through much worse, ah think, and the burden of it weighs at his soul. Perhaps," she said softly, her voice heavy with sorrow, "you should wait tah tell him about Desta."
Tears sprung to Jackie's eyes at the mention of Desta, and she bowed her head.
Ebele straightened up from rearranging the poultice on Eric's back, seeming satisfied that it wasn't worsening. "He ees a strong one, girl, there aren't many like him. But even so," she spared Jackie a look as she turned to leave them, "perhaps dis time around eet will be easier for him with you here beside him."
Eric floated in and out of consciousness the whole night. Heat seemed to radiate off his back and Jackie could tell that he was in unbearable pain. Ebele's words rang true. She stifled sobs at every moan that escaped his lips, at every tremble that racked his body.
She did her best by him — gently wiping his brow with shaking fingers and always had a glass of water ready for him when he woke. But it was incredibly difficult for her to sit helplessly by. More than once, she found herself involuntarily rising to get Ebele for the opium, but forced herself to sit back down again, gnawing at her knuckles till they were raw.
Once, he woke and noticed that her cheeks were wet with tears. He tried to raise his arm to brush them away, but the effort of the movement cost him greatly. Pain flashed across his haggard features and she gave a soft cry and crouched down beside him, forcing a brave smile to her lips.
"Don't cry," he slurred through a haze of pain. "Don't cry for me."
Jackie bit down so hard on the inside of her cheek that blood filled her mouth. She pressed a quivering kiss to the side of his face next to his ear and whispered soothing words, and prayed that he would pass out from the pain again.
It was about a week later, when the ravaged flesh on his back seemed to knit back together and start to resemble something like skin again. Eric was dreadfully weak, but his appetite was back and Jackie gratefully spooned chicken broth past his pale lips. Feeding him was hard, for Ebele had given strict orders that he was to lie on his front as much as possible, but she was thankful that Eric was a good patient, and other than the refusal of more opiates, he didn't fight her on anything else.
Slowly, his strength returned, and with that, his bearings. Three days after that, he voiced the question that Jackie had been dreading.
"Desta?" he asked her.
Her breath caught. She didn't know how to tell him.
Her silence was ominous and icy fingers of dread started to close about his spine. "Jackie?"
She broke. Her lips trembled and her eyes filled with tears. She shook her head unsteadily. "He, uh, he didn't make it."
Time seemed to stand still. Blood rushed to his head and Eric couldn't breathe. No. No.
"It can't be," he said, and gave his head a hard shake. "No. There's been a mistake. I brought him out. I held him in my arms. He was alive."
She reached for him, but he shook her off, trying to get up.
"No," he repeated. "No."
Daggers of pain stabbed his back as he pulled himself upright and he gritted his teeth, welcoming it, preferring it, to the one that was tearing him apart from the inside.
Tears rolled down her cheeks. "Eric, no, please don't do this to yourself."
He turned to her with such torment in his eyes that it nearly killed her. "I saved him, Jackie," he said. "I saved him," he said again and his voice broke.
She let out a cry and moved to stand between his legs, wrapping her arms around him. "I know, I saw you... I know."
He sagged in her arms, burying his face in her stomach and she felt his turmoil all the way to her soul. Her tears rained over the both of them.
"Why?" he asked. She felt his breath on her belly through the material of her top. "Why couldn't I save them?"
Her heart rent a bit more at the anguish in his words. She bent down to kiss his head, and was struck with a fresh wave of pain when she saw the wad of bandages covering his ruined back.
Eric, oh Eric. He had been through so much. Enough, please, enough, she prayed.
He had already been through so much. She shook her head for she didn't know the answer. Why did bad things happen to good people? Why make him save Desta only to have him die later? She didn't know. But it was so unfair.
She stroked his dark head and would have given anything to take his pain into herself. The words came to her unbidden, and perhaps in her soul she knew them to be true.
"I don't think they were meant to be saved, Eric," she said softly. Her fingers trailed down the side of his face. "If they were, you would have saved them."
He pulled himself away, perhaps refusing to believe that he had no power and control over fate and destiny, and got to his feet with difficulty.
She made a small sound of protest but didn't push the issue. He swayed a little when he was on his feet but gritted his teeth and managed to steady himself. She looked at him with anxious eyes but his face was set in granite and she could tell nothing of his thoughts or feelings, and all that she saw was that his eyes were red.
Her fingers closed around his forearm. "Eric, please," she tugged his arm gently, "you need to rest. Your back... It's been burnt pretty badly."
He turned his eyes on her and she saw that they were distant. He was locked away in another place where she knew he would let those feelings fester until they ate away at what was left of him.
She wouldn't allow it. Maybe she hadn't been there the first time when death and brutality had dragged him down to the deepest, darkest pit of hell and spit him back out a shell of who he was. But she was here now. And she would fight rabid dogs before she saw it claim the rest of the man that she had come to acknowledge as the most important thing in her life now.
She drew back her arm and slapped him.
His eyes registered shock, and the blank look disappeared to be replaced with one of incensed outrage.
"No!" she told him with a voice full of tears. "No, you don't Eric Forman. Don't do that. It's not your fault."
She rose to her tip-toes and cradled his face in her hands, already soothing away the sting of the slap. "Please… You can't keep doing this to yourself."
He looked at her with a storm brewing in his eyes. "Jackie… It's just. I've only known this way. It'll eat me alive." His face was grey and he looked as if he carried the burden of the world on his young shoulders.
"It's not your fault," she repeated.
He nodded and she wondered if he really heard her. "I need to see them."
Whatever it was that he had expected from meeting with Afia and Dakarai, gratitude was definitely not one of them.
The couple were grieving the loss of their youngest son, but they had fallen to their knees to thank Eric for giving that son a living chance. Dakarai had been beside himself that Eric had managed to save his wife, and with regards to his son, their sense of loss was deep, but they had been thankful to at least have been able to hold Desta one last time before he had succumbed to the amount of smoke he had already inhaled and his lungs gave out.
Eric was torn... and floored.
He felt that he didn't deserve their kindness towards him, that he didn't deserve anything but scorn and disgust from them.
They however, saw things differently, and as with their people, had a very fatalistic approach to life. They offered their thanks to the heavens for blessing them with the joy of knowing, and the time that they had, with their young son, and that that same son was being spared a far worse suffering than the one that had claimed him had he been burnt to death in the fire instead.
For the latter, they were immensely grateful to Eric for, for they saw it that Desta had never been meant to live longer than he had, and that it was because of Eric that he had been able to die peacefully in his parents' arms, instead of frightened and alone and in excruciating pain in the flames of a fire.
If anything, Afia blamed herself, for it was because of her carelessness that the fire had started in the first place.
Eric could understand, and for the most part, he could see how they viewed the circumstances. It didn't matter one whit to Eric though. He still took it on himself that he could have saved Desta, but he didn't. He could have saved the Ethiopian babies, but he didn't.
He was quiet and withdrawn, and he spent the next few weeks recovering and regaining his strength.
Having Jackie there with him helped, it meant so much, for she alone stopped him from going down the same dark path of guilt and despair.
She was there with him with her soothing touches when he wanted to rage and howl against the injustices of the world, she was there with him with her very presence to hold him when he was consumed with feelings of powerlessness and failure.
She didn't push him. Didn't force him to share or talk about it or anything like that and he loved her all the more for it. For everything that he was going through was his cross to bear, and he knew that only he could find a way to redeem himself of it.
Morathi came by everyday.
He came by and he sat with Eric, and he talked to Eric, and he shared his wisdom with Eric.
But this Eric had been through hellfire and back, and what he had endured the first time had tempered him with steel. Perhaps it was because of Jackie. Or perhaps, because he saw the world differently now, or perhaps simply because he wasn't the same person he was before. But he was stronger, and despite all that he had gone through, and the horrors he had endured he knew that he had to try to start to move on.
It could be because he had no choice, no choice but to move forward, and what Morathi said to him had resonated deeply within him.
He had waved his cane around and fixed Eric with a stare so intense that Eric could not have looked away from him at that time.
"You have ta be strong. For da heavier yer heart gets, da heavier da truths dat weigh on yer soul and da darker da sights dat burn into yer eyes, da stronger you have ta be ta carry on. Ta carry all of eet around.
"Be strong," Morathi had told him, and tapped him gently on the temple with his cane. "Up here," he indicated, and then moved the cane to rest against Eric's heart. "And in here."
He brought the cane back towards him to rest his wrinkled hands upon and gave a deep sigh. "Eet's the only way ta move on. Life ees hard sometimes, and men have ta be stronger. Eet ees da way of our people, eet ees da way of our life."
He smiled a tiny and weary smile. "Only you can help yer-self, young Air-reek."