She awakes screaming, sweating, hands balled into tight, white fists clenching her drenched sheets. Her lips shake, wrapping silently around words that don't leave her mouth, gasping air into her lungs that provides no solace, no comfort. Just warm tendrils of memory that seep into her lungs, choking her from the inside out. She tosses the blankets from her body and swings her legs over the side of the bed, put off by the streams of heavy sunlight that draft through the curtains over her window.
This is why she shouldn't nap. Shouldn't sleep at all really, when the only rest she receives is plagued by nightmares of the island, of the horrors she'd experienced.
She shakes off the remnants of her dream, still enveloped in the fog of sleep, and glances anxiously around the room, desperately searching for the only pair of arms that could provide her with any form of comfort.
"Owen?"
But she is resolutely alone.
Even to her own ears her voice sounds weak. The apartment is silent, just the breathing of the walls and the faint echo of the wind through its open surfaces to fill the void. The fog lifts enough for the reality of the name on her lips to come crashing down around her. Owen. There hasn't been an Owen for almost two years now. Not in her bed, her home, or her life. Her heart, no matter how much she chooses to ignore it, is another story.
She is exhausted. Mentally, emotionally, physically. In every way there is for a person to be exhausted. She wakes from nightmares to find no relief in reality; she needs an escape, a reprieve. Just one day to try and forget the guilt and atrocities that consume her. She is ashamed with herself for even considering it as an option.
But desperation is a powerful force.
Her bag is packed before she can outthink her decision, shoved unceremoniously into the back of her white Jeep and pedal to the floor, driving in the only direction she can think of. Night breaks around the open sky, an inky black that engulfs the light of her car into its arms. Normally this would scare her, cause her anxiety to rise and peak before the tremors set in. But now she has purpose, drive, a reason to fight through the black and towards light.
Its dawn when she reaches the clearing, led here by memory alone, and spots him with his back to her, stoking the thick pieces of wood that line the fire into the roar of flames before him, casting his shadow backwards and towards her.
Claire is suddenly conscious of her appearance, stops and tucks the stray pieces of her lightened hair behind her ears, knowing from the weighted feeing of her eyelids that there are dark circles around the green, a reminder of her all night drive to reach him. Rather than approaching she watches him in silence, admiring the strength in his back as he extends forwards to care for the fire, his form bathed in the early morning sun peaking above the mountains overtop his half built house and the orange crackle of the flames in front of him.
Suddenly he stills, senses prickling as he becomes aware of another presence. Owen can feel her like lead in his bones, the soft and familiar scent of her carried towards him on the wind, the overwhelming knowledge of her closeness freezing him in his tracks. He stands and turns, eyes falling upon her for the first time in too long.
They stand motionless, twenty feet apart, breathing in each other's presence with slow breaths.
Owen opens his mouth, a sharp quip on the tip of his tongue.
It's stopped dead on his lips as Claire bursts into tears before him.
He stands in shock, taking in the sight of her dishevelled hair, lighter than when he last saw her, rumpled clothes and tired eyes, tears escaping past them and running tracks down her smooth and pale cheeks. Owen is lost, helpless, hesitant in what to do to help her.
But he is powerless against habit and instinct.
He crosses the gap between them in four easy strides, pulling her thin frame against his just as her knees give out, cradling her in his arms in silence. Worry bunches up inside him at the sight of this woman, this strong, confidant, fire of a woman, wrecked like a small and helpless child in his embrace. He gently shushes her, strokes his fingers through the loose tendrils of hair that escaped her ponytail, feels the thrum of her heart against his own.
"Claire," he eases, not as a question, but as a comfort to hear her own name sound from his voice.
She gives him no reaction, just an increasing wet spot against the soft cotton of his shirt from her tears. Claire hiccups, desperately seizes air into her lungs and gulps back the heaving sobs, fully embarrassed. But she is powerless to stop them; a torrent of bottled up emotion spilling out and over into Owen's arms.
He knows her well; knows that no amount of words will comfort her right now, and instead scoops her legs into his arms and carries her into the trailer next to the framework of his home, navigates the narrow hall and places her cold and shivering body down onto his bed, lays beside her and strokes the hair from her face.
Claire's tears have become silent, streaming white rivers down her red cheeks as her eyes lock onto Owen's, his head on the pillow beside her, bodies turned like magnets towards each other's. She matches her breathing to his.
In. Out. In. Out.
The tears slow and dry in salty lines against her skin. Owen slides his thumb along them like tracks, tracing their path down her neck and into the fabric of her shirt, sending shivers across her skin. He wraps his arm around her back, pulling her body closer and turning to his back so she's tucked into the crook between his arm and body.
He is desperate to know why she's upset. Why, after two years and a not so amicable breakup, she shows up without a word in hysterics. But right now he can look past it; can be a simple comfort and steady force for a person he once loved, no questions asked.
Claire, with the sound of Owen's heart tapping a rhythm in her ear, closes her and falls asleep. And for the first time in two years, dreams of nothing.