Chapter 35: Fragile

The sky was turning a light pink when I woke up from my restless sleep. I was tired as hell, but my body couldn't seem to rest the way I wanted it to.

I was confused by the way my body was functioning. The ground wasn't my problem. I had slept on concrete and hard wood before, and even forest branches. All during my trips across the world, running from hell and getting back what I thought I deserved. Or at least what I imagined I deserved.

My leg pounded, the deep cut on my thigh soaking what was left of the material covering it. My throat was dry and I felt lightheaded as I practically crawled back to the river nearly ten feet away. It was nearly an hour later when Roy woke up, refreshed and rejoiced and completely stunned to find me already up and looking worse than before.

"You're up early." Roy commented, sitting down farther away from me than he had been yesterday. Somehow the distance made me feel safe, but it also made something in my stomach drop. Like I was depressed or something like that.

"How did you sleep?" Roy pushed. From my experience, I knew Roy was going to keep talking, keep on asking me stupid, useless questions that a two-year old could answer. By the way Roy kept eyeing me, I could tell that he was worried. Confusingly, I felt safe with him, even though I knew that I could kick almost anyone's ass if they tried to hurt me. I wasn't sure what was going on with my brain, but the fight between my heart and brain, it seemed, wasn't stoppping soon, so I'd have to get used to it.

"Like hell." I murmered. I stared blankly at the shimmering water of the stream, not daring to look over at Roy who was watching me intently. I could feel his eyes trail up and down and evitually set on the blood-soaked bandage he had came up with last minute the day before.

"How's your leg?" He asked, worry visible in his cracked voice. I stared down at my bandage and fiddled with it, scratching off some of the dry blood I saw on the surface and dusting off some of the dirt around it. I swallowed.

"Fine." I answered reluctantly. I didn't know what to say about my leg. It hurt like hell, sure, but to be honest, I wasn't feeling much of it. From the pain-killers still taking their time to wear off to my centered attention on the aching in my heart, I was torn. And not to mention confused.

"That's not true..." Roy muttered, taking his eyes off of me and staring at his hands. The silence became more awkward than I had thought, and I practically pleaded my brain to make up a bitchy remark or something of the sorts, but I did not listen. I kept picking at the dry blood on the bandage to pass the time.

"Painful..." I finally reply, my body cringing a little as the fabric slid a little across the cut. I felt weak, and to be honest, I really was. I hadn't trained or worked out in three days, not since the eve of Dinah's wedding. The drugs and the beatings dried me out too, which weakened me to the bone and practically killed my inner bad ass. That was how I had been imagining it.

Roy didn't say anything as he stared at me, his eyes wandering from the bloody cut that was revealed by the shortness of the fancy dress i still wore, to my face, glistening with drops of sweat made by the ascending amount of pain and the rising temperature of heat.

"Do you think we'll ever get home?" Roy suddenly asked, sounding slightly depressed. I sighed.

"I don't know. But I'd bet on you getting home." I said languishing.

"What do you mean you'd bet on me getting home?' " Roy asked. I smiled cheerless and shook my head lightly.

"Nothing..." I muttered.

"You don't think that you're going to get home, do you?" He mustered. His voice was weak and soft, and I could hear the sadness and despair lining his tone. "What's going on, Sarah? What's with you? You're acting... well, not like yourself. To be honest, it's kinda scary..."

I didn't answer Roy's lingering questions. I just stared at the water blankly, like I had done before, staring and thinking of the past twenty-four hours and all the hell that was going on inside of me.

"What do you expect me to say?" I asked, conflicted with the fact that my heart and mind were fighting for dominance. "That I feel like I've been through hell and back? That I've seen the unexplainable? That I can't fuction with all the questions and clouded judgements that are forming in my mind? That my mind is fighting with my racing heart as my body tries to heal itself? That I don't understand anything in this world at the moment?" I paused, feeling myself shake with insecurity and anger. "Everything is shutting down, Roy. My mind. My body. My life. It's all shutting down. And I can't stop it..."

"What do you mean?" Roy asked quietly. I shook my head.

"Just that. Everything's shutting down. My mind is running like there is no tommorrow. My heart is racing, like it's afraid of the upcoming disconnection of oxygen. The people who've grown to hate me are turning my life upside down right now. In the last fourty-eight hours I've been through hell. I've been kidnapped, abused, sexually assulted, drugged, poisoned, thrown into the wild with nothing but the clothes on my back and the ability to feel nothing. And none of that beats the stupid fight going on between my heart and my brain."

"Abused? Sexually assulted? What did they do to you?"

"I can't talk about it." I said simply. That wasn't an excuse either. I really was not able to talk about it. My mind wasn't functioning properly and my heart was killing me as it ached for something that confused me more than a thousand flying pigs.

Roy didn't speak, and I realized that he was giving me time. Giving me time to think about it and attempt to clear my head. But that wasn't possible. No matter how long or hard I tried, nothing could make me clear my mind. Nothing could clear my mind from the images and the emotions and the needs. It was burning me. And not in a good way.

Hours passed and niether of us spoke. We ended up walking at least eight miles down the stream, only seeing a few deer and an antelope. My thigh burned, but I ignored the hellish prinkling in my muscles. I walked behind Roy quietly, making sure that he didn't see me fall or trip as my right leg slightly gave out. It helped, but the infected cut was searing with a pain no one could be able to describe.

It was nearly dark again when we stopped. I placed all my weight on my left leg, a slight, breath-taking sensation crawling up my leg as the pain simmered down a little. The ability to sit down at the bank of the small stream was relieving and the feeling practically went numb. I could care less about Roy's eyes on me or the beads of sweat falling off my forehead. I was tired. More tired than I usually would get walking only eight miles in a long span of time. My eyes closed almost automatically as my back lightly collided with the mix of smooth, river rocks and patches of grass-like weeds.

I wasn't sure how long it was until my conscious picked up the steady movement of rocks next to me. Hands. Arms. Warmth. I was too distracted by my racing heart and the horror of my future death in the forest to actually realize what was going on. I felt closer to gravity as I was layed back onto the grass. But so much of it was different.

I wasn't laying down. I was leaning. Leaning on something a little softer and a lot warmer. My head was supported by the same thing, but it seemed to fit perfectly in it's place. The pain in my leg was numbed by the feeling of something tracing the edge of the bandage. I was comfortable. And at that moment, I didn't care about logic or hatred or awkwardness.

I could hear a deep inhale and a breath close to my face. "If only I realized what was really going on. If only I paid attention more to the little details. If only I saw how weak and fragile you were becoming. I could've done something to prevent all of this," I heard. It was a soft voice, a hint of regret mixing in with the sorrow notes. The next thing I knew was the same voice I had been listening to for those last few days command me. "Don't die on me, Sarah. Whatever you do, don't you dare die on me."