"No! No! NO NO NONO GUNTHER GUNTHER NO!"
It was the darkest part of the night; the long stretch of hours between midnight and dawn. Gunther and Jane were alone in the room – Adeline had finally succumbed to exhaustion, to the point where she'd been carried bodily to her own bedchamber.
Jane's sudden screams were frantic, breathless, entirely hysterical. They came out of the blue during one of his pacing times – although he was pacing less and less frequently now. He no longer had much energy for it; his exhaustion was dragging him under. He felt nearly drugged with it.
But the panicked cries of the woman he loved acted much like a bucket of cold water thrown over his head. They brought everything back into sharp focus, real quick.
"Jane! JANE!" He was across the room in a heartbeat. She was sitting bolt upright in bed, the coverlet pooled around her waist, her eyes wide and wild, and he didn't know what she was seeing, but it definitely wasn't this room, wasn't him.
"No! No! God NO! Me, shoot ME! GUNTHER, GUNTHER N–"
He practically threw himself onto the bed; ended up on his knees, straddling her legs, wrapping his arms around her and just crushing her to him, not thinking, not rationalizing, just needing that contact, needing it. Now.
She stiffened in his arms, trying to wrench away. "Gunther, Gunther, no, please no, do not – do not – no Gunther, stay with me, stay with me, please! No – No – NO –"
"Jane. Jane. Jane, Jane." Slowly, he eased her back down against her pillows, murmuring her name over and over again as he did so. "Jane, I am here, right here, not going anywhere, Jane."
He couldn't help but notice – and God, how it hurt his heart to see – that she immediately crossed one arm protectively over her body, pressing it up hard beneath the swell of her breasts. She was still hurting so much and God, it should have been him, it should have been him.
Her other hand though, was caught in the fabric of his shirt again, high up on his chest near his shoulder, and he couldn't tell – didn't think she understood herself – whether she was trying to pull him closer or push him away.
He took both his hands – shaking, they were shaking harder than they ever had in his life – and framed her face with them, just as he had when she'd been lying on the road. She'd been screaming then too, and she was the strongest person he knew, bar none, the strongest and the bravest and the noblest and the… the… and she didn't deserve this, goddamnit she didn't deserve this, this was so wrong, so wrong, so WRONG.
"Jane. Jane. Please. Oh God, please. Come back to me. Jane, come back."
"No," she whispered hoarsely, and there was such anguish in her voice, such defeat, such utter… brokenness, that Gunther's breath caught in his throat. She was looking right at him, but her eyes were vacant and… and burning with despair. "There is nothing to come back to, I was not fast enough, I failed, I failed. Gunther. Oh, God. No. Do not be dead, oh please please, NO."
She wasn't seeing him, wasn't hearing him, wasn't feeling his hands on her face. She was lost to him, in some nightmare reality where he was lost to her – and that was when he reached the end of his ability to cope, and then something happened that surprised them both.
He felt the sudden, hitching shudder rip through him, but he didn't understand what it meant, what it was, until he saw the tear splash down on Jane's face. It was quickly followed by two more.
He had just time to think, God DAMN it, is this the only thing I am good at anymore, crying like a ch–
And then Jane, beneath him, gasped and blinked, once – twice – and he suddenly realized that her eyes were… were hers again, they were aware again – they were so amazingly, beautifully lucid and clear that they took his breath away.
"Gunther," she breathed, and took the hand that had been fisted in his clothing and raised it to his cheek – cupping the side of his face, wiping the rest of his tears away with her thumb.
A smile started to curve her lips; it was an expression of such happy astonishment that it bordered on downright awe. "Are you all right?" she asked wonderingly. "Are you really?"
He didn't have a chance to respond. He was still processing how absurdly backward it was that she should be asking him that question, when she sighed, and her eyes fell closed, and her hand dropped away from his face.
She was gone again, but she'd been there – she'd truly been there. For the first time in hours and hours and hours, she'd been there with him, awake and aware.
It felt like a turning point.
Something in him – some terrible, tight black knot – loosened. Just a very little bit, but it loosened. He drew in a deep, shaky breath; he'd been breathing at the top of his lungs for so long, so long. He'd almost forgotten what it felt like to actually fill them, right to the bottom.
Then he shifted her gently over on the bed, lay down beside her, snugged one arm protectively around her waist, plunged his other hand into her riot of flame-colored curls, and was asleep – truly, deeply asleep – almost before his head came to rest, cushioned on her uninjured shoulder.
OOOOO
(A/N: well how's that for a Christmas present - she woke up! Merry Christmas! :)