White Knight – Part I

"She needs me!" Peter shouted at her, staring at her in horror, the knowledge that she could be so cold, so heartless, a cruel wrench to him. "You should know, you used to need me."

"Used to?" Carla raised one of her eyebrows in disdain; Peter felt like reaching out and ripping it off her face, the sight of it, of what thoughts prompted it to travel so high up her forehead, jabbed at Peter's guilty conscience in a way that discomforted him. "That's the real problem here, innit? I used to need you, but then I got better."

…Peter reached up to his throat, clawing at the hand he imagined was pressed against it, constricting his breath… She had needed him during her breakdown, he recollected. Desperately so. And he had been prepared to do anything to help her, even if it cost him everything, which it almost did. But now she was a lot stronger, back working in the factory, and she didn't need him as much as she once had. But Abi? Abi did need him. Relied on him. And that made him feel good. Just like she'd helped him feel good after Carla had rejected him, had gone to the extreme of buying him a boat just to get him out of her life. Did that mean he had wanted Abi? No, not really. Not beyond the physical. And not even that anymore. He'd always wanted Carla. He would always want Carla. Why couldn't she see that? His chest tightened with the almost unbearable pain…

"Exactly!" Peter cried in triumph, ecstatic that she'd made his argument for him. "You should understand how she feels. You should remember what it was like."

"I remember I fell in love with you," she said. "Is she in love with you?"

"Don't be ridiculous."

But it wasn't ridiculous. How had he not seen it? Carla had warned him. He had been genuinely shocked when Abi had kissed him. So shocked that he didn't pull away immediately. He wondered now if Abi had chosen that spot on purpose, if she'd known that Carla would be likely to see them there. Which of course she had. The look on Carla's face, the pain, the reproach; that memory would be seared onto his mind and his heart forever, even as it began to flutter spasmodically out of rhythm, pulsating fast in his chest…

"That's not the real question that needs answering though, is it?"

"You tell me," he scoffed, shrugging off her concerns. "You're telling the story."

"Are you in love with her? Like you were in love with me? Like you were in love with Tina?"

"Don't bring her into it," Peter warned.

"Why not?" Carla challenged him. "You admitted it, didn't you? I was strong again after…" Even after all these years, Carla couldn't think or speak of Frank and what he'd done to her without tears smarting in her eyes. "After Frank. I didn't need you, not like I had done, not so that it consumed every fibre of my being. Because that need in me, it had changed. It had transformed into something better, into something stronger, healthier. Something beautiful. But you couldn't see that, all you could see was that I didn't need you. And then Tina came along and she made you feel all those things again. And you, stupid fool that you were, you fell for it."

…Peter sucked in his breath, hard it rattled in his chest, the wheeze whistling loud in his ear… It was true, he had been a fool. He had felt worthless next to Carla. She was so strong and capable and hard. Like a rock, she was unbreakable while simultaneously breaking everyone around her. She had broken him. Or so he had thought. Steamrolled over his life, taken his independence, made him dependent on her.

He didn't love Tina, there had been no question about that. But he loved how she had made him feel. A feeling that Carla hadn't been able to give him anymore. And now Abi was giving him that same feeling. He didn't love Abi, he loved that feeling. He wasn't even really attracted to her. But she needed him. And he loved that. He craved that. He gasped, desperate for air, his lungs starved of oxygen…

"I made a mistake."

"Why are you making the same mistake now?" Carla cried, the tears no longer held at bay, but streaming down her cheeks unchecked. "Hmm? Because, here we are, back in the same old place."

"It's not the same."

"The problem with you, Peter, is that you need to feel like the big man, the heroic man, like some daft white knight rescuing the damsel in distress. And that need trumps love every single time. I don't need you now, not in the way you want me to. Not in the way I did last year when I was broken. My love isn't enough for you. Because you love me more when I'm broken."

"That's not true."

Was it true? Because, he couldn't deny that the part of him that hated himself, that weak part, that part full of self-pity and loathing, maybe that part did love playing the hero… If only he could save himself now, he thought, as his head jerked and his body trembled uncontrollably, his tongue thick in his mouth as he tried to speak, to call for help…

"And now that you've found someone new who's broken, who needs you, who makes you feel good, you don't need me anymore."

"What do you want me to do?" he appealed to her. "Do you want me to ignore her? To let her destroy herself?"

"I want you to not destroy us. But you can't help yourself, can you?"

"I'm in control of this, Carla, you have to trust me."

She had pleaded with him not to destroy everything they had, the life they had built together, by chasing after that fleeting feeling of being someone – anyone's – hero. But still he had pressed on, ignored her, berated her for her lack of compassion. And, in his quest to save Abi, he had destroyed something much more precious. He had destroyed the one thing he would have laid down his life to save. Carla had been right. But it was too late now. He had pledged her his life, and now he would give it. Already he could feel it slowly ebbing away…

"You're not, Peter. You're addicted to it, addicted to it just as much as you are the booze. And if you won't do anything about it, then… I dunno," she shrugged. "I don't know that there's a future for us."

He looked down at his hand. Through eyes that could no longer see clearly, he could just make out the small white bottle. The bottle he'd taken from Abi to protect her against herself. He didn't know why he had unscrewed the top off that bottle, or why he'd shoved a fistful of the tablets into his mouth. All he knew was that he had wanted to stop that feeling that was gnawing away inside of him. To take away that ache, that consciousness that he'd lost everything and that it was all his own fault. As his fingers grew weak and his eyelids drooped, his grip on the bottle relaxed and it clattered to the floor.

"So, what?" Peter shrugged. "Is this you giving me an ultimatum? I have to choose between you and her?"

"Oh, Peter, if you need to be given an ultimatum, then you've already made your choice."

Carla. The word didn't escape his lips, it couldn't, there was not enough life left in him to utter another syllable. But his soul was screaming her name, just as it would scream her name for eternity; for that is how long he would yearn for her. Carla. He wanted Carla. But Carla was gone, and he was left alone to die. And now, with his voice silenced, his eyes closed and unseeing, and his life drifting slowly from this world and into the next as the morphine washed through his body, his final thought, the thought that would linger forever, was as always… Carla.