Summary: You had enough presence of mind to try to tamp down onto the squashed it all down, mercilessly, in a bid to stamp it out of your system. And for a while, it was enough. It seemed to work.

Disclaimer: see part one.

CHAPTER TWO: IN ABSENTIA

* * *
- - - The stars, the moon …
They have all been blown out,
You've left me in the dark.
No dawn, no day,
I'm always in this twilight,
In the shadow of your heart. - - -
From 'Florence and The Machine'
* * *

Swimming in and out of consciousness left you feeling confused and hazy. You could no longer tell if it was night or day, if you should still be in your clothes, or if should change.
Such trivial matters did not occupy your mind for long. What did it matter if it was dark or light outside? What was the importance of wearing different clothes on your back … when you couldn't even muster enough will, and strength to so much as move? No one is going to see you. No one will come looking for you. So what does it matter?
Nothing, you told yourself, it does not matter, it's not important.

Nothing.

Your eyes are closed, and they are going to stay that way, because if you open them-

I can't face it. I don't want to hear it. I can't bear it.

The surface underneath you is soft, and it cocoons your exanimate body. The last temperature you remember was around seventy-five degrees Farenheit, but you don't know what it is like now. Cold seems to caress your skin, and your extremities feel numb, frozen. You wonder idly if the coldness is seeping into you, or if it is radiating outwards from within.

Your heartbeat is slow and steady, but it seems as though your chest aches with every steady pump and flow of it. The very thing that gives you life, that keeps you alive and breathing is also the very thing that's shredding you apart.

I can't bear it.

The anxiety and sheer terror have abated somewhat. Hours ago – days? – they had fought viciously tooth and nail in a coup to take over your body, unprepared as it was for violent assault. You remember something about a mirror and tiles – the bathroom? – and faucets twisting under your fingers, the water running and racing to waste down the empty drain. Somehow the sensation of your feet hitting cold tiles – the sharpness of it – flashes through your memories, stark and vivid with it.

Your flesh crawled with the impossible strength your soul was being battered with. For some reason, in the hysterical middle of it, you recalled awakening in your small cot when you were a small child living with numerous other small children one night, to feel creeps crawling over your small, terrified body.
The sensation was the one and very same now, years distant into the future.

But you're no longer a child, no longer dependent on their small kindnesses, their rare charities.

And still, you feel just as helpless, just as frightened, just as needy.

Your voice does not cry out in need like it did before. But you desperately want to, wish to, need to.

Despite that state of being, you had enough presence of mind to try to tamp down onto the hysteria which threatened to rise from the recesses of your womb up, up into your gut, past your lungs, into your vocal chords.
You squashed it all down, mercilessly, in a bid to stamp it out of your system.

And for a while, it was enough. It seemed to work.

But now, now …

… now your mind is weary, your chest tight with lacking breath, your body locked in on itself, desperately seeking comfort. It seems that those years of your childhood spent hosted by the State in an institution have yet to teach you that no matter how much you crave it, no matter how much you need it, no comfort will ever come to you.

It. Will. Not. Come.

Exhaustion of the body and soul makes sure you dive under again, if only for a while. It is how your mind has chosen to cope with the emotional trauma, and you have no choice but to let it. You're not even sure if it's something you truly want, this sleeping, or if it even matters whether you actively want it or not.

After all, it is all that remains now.

Your eyes – they have NOT opened, no, nor will they – are shielded from any source of light thanks to the duvet you have hid yourself under. Inside of it everything is—

Not

Calm

But …

It isn't harsh. It isn't unbearable. It lets you just be. You need it. You need to just be. You couldn't breathe without it, outside, where everything is hard, and raw. Here, nothing tears you apart with vicious teeth stripping you away of all your strength, of all your defences. He was never yours to hold – ohGOD I can't bear it-ICAN'TBEARIT – but the memories won't stop coming; you remember the way you were so sure, so innocent.
But that was then … can we ever go back again? You think to yourself, can we ever go back?

You don't have to push yourself to – and it is so. Hard. To – speak, to answer back, blank sentences stranded together to hide what's really underneath, reflecting all the emptiness back. I couldn't speak now. The salt from all the tears I had cried had dried all the words in me.
Out there the sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach couldn't let you think. Here, now, you feel like a stone going down, down, down, sinking hopelessly into depths hitherto never reached. And it hurts. It hurts so much you're crippled by it.

Here, there is no mockery, no false platitudes, no frenzied questions and flurries of useless activities. You prefer the here to the out there. Because somewhere in all the talking the meaning faded out.

Here …

… even if your phone rings – which it DOESN'T/how could it/WHY doesn't it – you are not required to be efficient at all times, even if your body is barely pushing itself onwards. You don't have to pretend and be stoic and be strong, and be it all, everywhere and all the time

Here …

… is where you can avoid it all, the sights, the sounds, the (lack of) smells, the thinking – don't think about it, just don't think about it, oh godohgod dontthinkaboutit –

Hours before, when you were still in the grips of the strongest – and that shocks you – fear you have ever known, the ridiculous thought of getting in your car and driving out there, to his house, had for a moment clouded your thoughts. But just imagining how still and empty – he lived alone, but though the house was huge he filled it all with his mere presence and strength of character – and soundless it all would be made her stumble away. And … JARVIS would be there, and you couldn't hear that voice, no, oh no-

The quiet is … so loud – there's no other word for it – and this is the only unbearable thing you find yourself capable of toting. The quiet lets you stay in that limbo, in the in-between, and it is … easier, here. As long as you can surround yourself in darkness with nothing but this quiet, you're relatively okay with not being okay.

As long as you can just.

Not.

Feel.

You are safe here. And so here is where you will stay.

Chapter two end.

R&R!