A/N: Sorry my friends – this was necessary and cathartic.
For Steve
Obsidian
obsidian – noun – a hard, dark, glasslike volcanic rock formed by the rapid solidification of lava without crystallization
Returning to the flat had been automatic. A task completed without thought. Sitting in his chair, shoes off, feet bare, head on hand, staring, numb.
Nothing.
No thoughts.
Just…nothing.
Because thinking of something would mean remembering.
And remembering would lead down a road of self-destruction and irreparable damage.
He became aware when the light left the room.
He, again automatically, got up, and without thought made his way to the bedroom.
He stood looking down on the bed.
Their bed.
The first night without him.
He remembered the last time they shared it with perfect clarity. He remembered the desperation in their lovemaking. The underlying worry that everything was going to go wrong.
Everything had, but not in the way he had imagined. He had figured an arrest maybe. Scandal definitely. Something they could ride through. Something to be fixed.
Not this.
His brain shied away from the word death.
Such a permanent word.
He'd always hated the euphemisms 'passed on', 'demise', 'departed'.
Call it what it was. Don't pretty it up and negate it.
But now he covered up the word with darkness. He could actually see the dark in his head and the word shimmer behind, trying to grab his attention.
He wasn't sure how long he stood there.
He wasn't sure when he crawled into bed, not on his own side, but the other.
He buried his face into the pillow there.
He inhaled and tried to breathe past the enormity, represented in a lump in his throat. He tried to swallow past the feeling of grief, tried to swallow past the guilt. The guilt of the survivor. The one who had done nothing to stop the awful consequences of the jump. Who had not been able to save him.
Smell from the pillow, from the bed, triggered memories and initiated the sting of unshed tears and the unrelenting pressure building up behind his eyes.
This is not real.
This did not happen.
But cruel reality slammed down into his chest, leaving him unable to breathe, took what was left of his heart and squeezed it. Opened a void.
It started with a slight hitch and then a fierce gulp. A wave of utter despair and blackness engulfed him, ripped out all the moorings, swept back to sea leaving desolate wreckage behind. It was a wave, a hammer. It was only there to punish and tear any foundations that might stabilize him. It was a smothering blanket, a suffocating cloak. It did not bring comfort.
He almost wailed but stuffed the pillow into his mouth to stifle sounds, because if he really let go it would be dragged painfully from him and reverberate around the flat. It would be unending and relentless. The sound would awaken Mrs. Hudson, the neighbours and the dead.
After what seemed like a lifetime but was only moments, the crying stopped to be replaced by shudders and tremors. There was temporary relief and his face felt raw and aching.
He was exhausted by the sheer weight of the emotionality of what had happened. He closed his eyes and rocked, hoping for a distraction and the pseudo comfort of a body in motion.
He fell into a restless slumber.
While there he dreamt. He could almost make out the tall shape with the disheveled hair and the smile reserved just for him. He heard a beloved voice whisper in his ear.
It's alright. I'm okay.
A sad smile rested on his lips and there was a slight relaxation of the muscles in his neck and shoulders. A brief respite and a moment of forgetting.
Upon awaking the next morning, truth smashed into him again and brought him to his knees as he climbed out of bed on the wrong side and a natural subconscious movement of turning to the one who was no longer there, being the doorway to that particular hell.
He collapsed in upon himself, dying sun, gathered what remained of his distraught state and wove a protective shell around himself. The once star, now a dead black hole. Light had shone from him, but light was now swallowed and nothing returned from the abyss.
The heat and love they had shared in that bed, cooled rapidly. His heart, which had been full of warmth and joy, turned brittle and hard, not like a diamond of crystallized beauty and sparkle, but black like obsidian. The reflection in the mirror-like surface was sharp and cold. There was fragility there, the instability of a weakened thing. The fragility of something that with the right blow, the perfect hit, would be shattered into a million pieces, never to be repaired.
As time slowly passed, ever the soldier, ever the man, he hid his emotions behind and in the darkness.
Never show your feelings. Never be hurt again. Never let anyone close enough to be swallowed up by the enormity of the grief you carry.