"I went through my things at my parents house
and it felt like someone had died.
I started to cry.
My old room is somebody else's now -
it's been years since it was mine.
I'm pretending I'm fine.
But that version of me ten years ago,
Where did they go?
Who I used to be is just a ghost.
I'm trying to mourn somebody I'm not anymore.
The person that I was before,
Is dead and gone...
And it's kind of sad...
Now knowing I can never go back
to the person I was in the past.
I never got to say to goodbye.
So rest in peace,
To the old me."
"rest in peace" - blu eyes
Trigger Warning: themes and descriptions of self harm.
Molly shifting against his thigh woke him from his slumber. He didn't expect to have fallen asleep, as sleep so often eluded him these days, but there he was, rubbing sleep from his eyes. As though suddenly realising what vulnerability she had allowed herself to express, she sat bolt upright. The sudden loss of her weight and warmth from his thigh left him feeling momentarily mournful.
"Sorry," she mumbled, rubbing her own eyes.
Charles tried his best now to let his disappointment show as he gave her a soft smile.
"You were tired," he excused with a shrug. "You never have to apologise for napping on me."
Only then did she look at him, her expression back to the guarded expression she arrived with. He watched as thoughts of reality returned to her, as she suddenly stiffened, the tension of mortal panic returning to her face as she must have remembered the circumstances that brought her here. She immediately rushed to check her phone, visibly deflating when whatever she had expected to be on the screen wasn't there.
"Sorry for just showin' up," she murmured self consciously, looking out at the view, which had now brightened into a delightfully Spring afternoon. "I should go and let you get on."
Charles was embarrassed with the speed with which he launched himself to stop her fleeing. Or rather, he would have been, if he cared.
"Don't go. You came all this way - it's no issue, honestly." He looked round to Tiny where she was sitting diligently on her bed, looking up at them both sulkily. "Since it's my day off, my only other plan was to surf, if the weather cleared."
He stood and stretched his skeleton for a distraction, unaware that Molly's eyes followed the riding up of his shirt of their own accord, taking in the sight of a lightly tanned hipbone.
"Looks as though it has, too," he added with a hopeful tone that did not go unnoticed by either of them.
Molly was chewing her lip when he turned back to look at her, unaccustomed to her silence. He wished, for an unquantifiable time since they met, that he could read her mind.
"I can drive you to Tiverton if you really need to get back," he offered immediately, hoping the sadness at the prospect of letting her go didn't show too starkly on his face, reading her tension and worry as he had overstepped the mark. "It's no bother to me, though I would love for you to stay." Frowning, it suddenly occurred to him. "How did you get here, anyway?"
At that, she blushed somewhat, flapping her hand in mid-air in an attempt at nonchalance. "I drove and left my car in the harbour. The ferry man recognised me and gave me a free ride over."
"You drove?" He didn't mean how it came out, but he watched her bristle. "Sorry, I didn't mean it like that."
She rolled her eyes at his sheepish expression. "Yeah, I know right? Finally did it." Her expression darkened. "I jus' got in the car after my appointment and jus' started driving. I didn't even really know where I was going until I was on the Westway. It was like…autopilot or something."
"Well, I'm very glad you're here," he said, carefully. "Though, if you were that upset, I do wish you would have called before you drove such a slog of a journey."
She was up, looking at the splendid view of Rock island's bay, silent in response to his worrying.
"I've been driving a lot since I last saw you," she said, her voice quiet as though far away.
Driving had always been something Molly had struggled with, anxious she'd crash. She'd finally mastered it, along with swimming, by the time they were married with Charles' gentle persuasion, but as far as he remembered, she had never particularly enjoyed either.
Something else he no longer knew about her. The thought made him deflate with a gripping sadness.
"I'm sure," he said, unsure what to say. "I never had any doubt you were brilliant at it."
He watched the back of her as she seemed to weigh up what to do. She checked her phone again, as though the call they both knew she was waiting for would naturally appear. It hadn't.
"When did they say they'd call?" He asked it gently, addressing the elephant in the room so I she didn't have to.
"I paid for a private consult," she said. "So, a day or two, they said."
He nodded, punctuating the neared for a change of subject with the slaps of his hands on his thighs. "Come for a surf with me," he coaxed, gently, practically holding his breath with fear of rejection. "At best, it'll be a distraction." He barely managed to keep in the smirk that he knew automatically wanted to rise on his face at this suggestion, as she always did hate that it was something he could do well and she couldn't. That and her age-old distaste for water.
"Won't it be taters out there at this time of year?!"
Charles shrugged. "Not so much in a wetsuit." Biting back a smile, he offered her a challenge he knew they competitive side of her wouldn't be able to resist. "Anyway, someone as Army fit as you, surely a bit of cold water shouldn't be an issue."
It was meant to be a joke, he hoped to make her laugh, but the weight of his verbalising appreciation for her physique hung between them conspicuously. He cringed as she looked away at the view, mentally kicking himself, but when he looked up again, she was smirking.
"Yeah, alright, I'd like to come an' have a surf," she said suddenly, turning around to face him. "Someone's gotta make sure the old git don't drown."
"Of course," he agreed, twisting his expression to attempt to be neutral, but they both sniggered. He let her pick on him without comment. She could pick on him forever if it just meant she was here. "You and Tiny can be on old git duty."
As it turns out, one of Molly's old bikinis and her old wetsuit were still in his parent's beach hut, where all the beach supplies were kept. Charles closed his eyes as he always did when he had to set foot in there, trying to get in and out as quickly as possible against the memories of the two of them that it triggered: cuddling together to look at the view despite the chill night after night; making love on the chaise inside with the expansive panoramic view of the ocean when they knew they had the house to themselves; which had also been the night, right there on that little stretch of sand, he asked her to marry him and she finally said yes.
Molly, unbeknownst to Charles, was being entirely overcome with such invasive memories too, though less of a sexual graphic nature and more, bizarrely, because it was the first place he ever called her 'darling'. It had been an innocuous, innocent moment, one that would never have stuck out as anything worth remembering. He'd been calling over to her from the water, asking her to bring him the net so he and Sam could 'catch some fishies'. (There were no fish stupid enough to come that close to shore, of course, but the rock pools were a fun father/son excursion non the less). Just like that, the word had come out and if he'd been as taken by it as she had been hearing it, he hadn't showed it.
'Molly, darling, bring the net, will you? Sam's found a corker!"
Something so simple, and yet, to her, it had symbolised a real turning point, not only because it hadn't made her feel uncomfortable in the slightest in a way such a posh word usually would have, but because the Charles she had known up until that point had never called her by a pet name that the Army didn't also use for her - much less one he used for no one else. She had done as he'd asked with a soft, distracted smile, saying nothing of it, though suspected he had realised by the time her feet hit the surf just what he'd said and mentally worried it was too soon. It had been their first holiday in Cornwall together then, after all.
It was a word that made her feel so precious to him, in the end. Where she came from, it was almost an unrecognisably different word as people in the East End stretched the vowels and dropped the 'g' - and said it to ever Tom, Dick and Harry they passed on a daily basis. But when Charles said it, it sounded gentle and meaningful and a symbol of her status in his life.
One of the many signs that things had disintegrated beyond repair between them, after Elvis, was that all his nicknames and that sweet pet-name had vanished from his vernacular. She just became 'Molly', day in and day out, and that was when he could seemingly bare to address her at all.
By the time they walked down to the boathouse, she was stiff with it, the anger and sadness and exhaustion thanks to the grief swarming in her head at the idea of all they had had, and all they had lost… and at the hands of her then-best friend, no less. Had he ever called her darling? No, she wouldn't go there.
It was violent and changeable, grief, and she often now she grieved the loss of the version of herself, of her life and of Charles, that could have been… and now would never be.
Charles' parents' Cornwall getaway was purchased in the days when Rock, the 'island' across from Padstow estuary, was only mildly middle class and expensive. By the time Molly first visited a few years ago, she had immediately noted that everyone they passed was just as posh and public school as Charles - our even worse! - and she knew from Googling it that it was now the most expensive real estate in the United Kingdom thanks to it's remote location, white, silky sands and breathtaking views of Cornwall, complete with a few celebrity chef residents to boot.
As a result, one had to get a boat or ferry from Rock back into Padstow's harbour if one wanted to get to the mainland without driving hours all the way round. Charles had tried to explain to her for days on end why it was called an island by residents if it wasn't in fact an island and you could technically drive all the way round to it, but he had given up. Their bloody massive glass house was on the top of the hill looking down at the ocean, with its own little beach and wooden beach hut. Beside it was a little boathouse, where 'the Cordelia' had its home: the James' beautiful traditional speed boat that looked like something Molly only recognised from old Grace Kelly movies Charles' mother played her.
Charles clambered into the boat with the ease of someone who now did it daily - there was nothing but one tiny restaurant on Rock island, beside the houses - and held out a hand without second thought to take Molly's as she climbed down into it after him, along with Tiny.
He pulled the cord to start the engine and gave her a very tentative smile to make sure she was settled. She barely managed to return it, but she tried, and he forced himself to focus on the fact she was still her. She had asked to join in. Yes, it was most likely just to ignore the 'reality' of her life, he reasoned, but at that moment, he really didn't care.
They had barely spoken since agreeing to go surfing and the silence had been companionable, at least on Molly's side. Charles watched her carefully, trying to gauge when would be right to say all the things he was so desperate to keep talking about, but also just generally worried for her.
Molly hesitated as he started the engine, as if she felt something had been forgotten, and he paused in response.
"What?"
"Sure you want a Doris in your boat?" She asked, genuinely questioning. "You always said women was bad luck on boats unless you give one a kiss first."
Charles bulked and was immediately desperate to laugh. Molly, beside him, took this reaction to mean he didn't remember.
"You know! Y'used to insist y'had to kiss me face before we went anywhere on the sea!"
It was nearly impossible to keep in the laughter bubbling up inside him, because all this time, he had thought she'd realised. He had made ceremony of giving her a big, loving kiss on the cheek every single time they got in any boat, years ago when she first visited, when their relationship had been naught but six months old. When she'd asked why, he'd given her a passing line about superstition, just as a joke. For all the time since, he thought she had realised that it was a stupid, silly tradition he had started, just because he had wanted to do it.
"I was pulling your leg, Molly!" At that, he did finally let himself laugh. "Women were said to be bad luck centuries ago, but on ships - this is a boat." She looked confused, still. "I just… I thought you knew!"
Her face twisted, embarrassed and he immediately felt guilty for laughing. "Oh," she exhaled, heat on her face, before immediately launching into a defensive swipe of her fist against his arm. "You twat! I thought we'd sink if we didn't do it!"
Despite her stubborn intention to appear affronted, she did eventually give in to the laughter that he couldn't keep down, both of them laughing at her expense.
"I genuinely thought you knew," he sighed, trying to catch his breath through his chuckles. "I'm sorry." She gave him a dirty look but the smirk on her mouth said she was jesting him. "Forgive me - what can I say? I am a typical man and wanted any excuse to kiss you, I recall."
She looked at the churn of the water as he pulled the accelerator and the engine roared them out into the channel towards Padstow and felt momentarily doubtful. What if he had perhaps been wrong and it was bad luck? She never did trust the water.
It didn't escape his notice that her hands were white knuckle tight on the handrail in front of her. Feeling empathy for her fear, he briefly leaned to her and pressed a kiss to her cheekbone. It made her jump a little, but he saw the appreciation in her eyes when she realised what he'd done.
"Just in case!" He called loudly over the engine and the splashing of passing water, giving her a kind smile that said 'don't mention it'. She rolled her eyes, her sarcastic mask back, but he didn't miss the small smile that settled into a curve on her mouth.
The sea was choppy, given it was good surfing weather and sprayed them both with water, and the boat bounced as Charles sped across the main stretch before they got to the red buoys, where he'd be forced to slow down to 5 knots.
Ever the adrenaline junkie she remembered him to be, he clearly was back to enjoying the roller-coaster jostling, grinning each time she accidentally let out a screech of surprise as the boat would momentarily send her out of her seat by an inch or two. The millisecond when one's stomach would lurch when the body was forced against gravity before landing back on the seat was something Molly had secretly enjoyed, too - the sounds of surprise were equally of private delight as much as they were shock each time.
It had been so long since she'd allowed herself even the smallest childlike joy as this and before she knew it, she was grinning like Sam always did every time his father used to take them out into the bay just to jet along when their were few boats on the water. With the next gravity-defying bump, she let out a cry of surprise that was also a childlike squeal of laughter.
The sound jolted straight through Charles in a way reminiscent of when Sam was a baby and would cackle in that addictive, infectious way only young babies did. It launched his heart with joy for hearing it - a sound he would never have believed he would hear when he woke up that morning. She looked over and he was grinning, but in a more subdued, self satisfied way he always used to when he used to watch her enjoying herself.
"Bit choppy!" He shouted over the noise as they were momentarily bumped out of their seats again. "I reckon the surf'll be good!"
When they pulled into the estuary at Padstow, it was satisfyingly peaceful as it was far too early in the year for the hoards of tourists. Charles leapt from the deck to the pontoon in his well-worn deck shoes, busying himself with mooring The Cordelia while she tried to make ease of climbing out without his assistance. Tiny was excitedly already waiting on the pontoon, grumbling in the conversational way a contented dog always did. Molly smiled as she watched him talk quietly to the dog, a kindness and consideration in his manner towards animals she'd never had a chance to see, other than brief moments with other people's babies.
They approached Charles' old, bottle green Land Rover Defender, surfboard strapped to the roof, and Molly couldn't help but raise her eyebrows.
"This thing's this running?"
Charles made a show of looking affronted. "Of course she is!"
"You and your bloody cars."
The small things within the car were symbolic of small changes, her cheap 'beach' sunglasses were no longer on the dashboard and her favourite car perfume air freshener that used to hang in the rear view mirror were gone. However, his notable staples were the same. His favourite photo of he, Molly and Sam, posing on the rocks at Treyarnon Bay, was still slotted into the air vent, dog-eared and sun faded. It momentarily rose a lump in her throat to see it, only to be made worse by the sight of her old beach shoes, still sitting neatly next to his in the boot as he opened the boot door to let Tiny jump in.
Arriving at Constantine Bay to the sight of peak, blustery surf weather, they put on their wetsuits with backs to one another as they hunched and took shelter in the dunes behind the Defender, while Tiny watched with increased impatience. Molly had accidentally turned, and was momentarily distracted and bashful by the brief sight of his tanned broad shoulders and the movement of the muscles in his back as she turned prematurely. Molly had wiggled into her bikini under cover of a towel in the back of the car and was now attempting to hoist herself into the suit without asking for his help. It was too big for her now – she had lost a lot of weight since Charles had gotten ill, and much more so once his betrayal happened, stress just dropping it from her at a rather alarming rate as she had thrown herself into work and often just didn't have an appetite or motivation to eat.
Suddenly, a pulling sensation almost made her jump as she turned to see Charles yanking the suit for her, assisting in pulling it into place. He was so close, hands so strong and yet as civilised with his slim, nimble tanned fingers, he straightened out each roll of thick material and winched it up over her shoulders. The silence between them was somewhat charged and awkward, something which frightened her beyond belief.
As she followed he and Tiny to the shore with a board under her arm, it infuriated her that anyone could look so absolutely modelesque in a wetsuit as her estranged husband did. Wasn't that inhuman or something?! She herself felt frumpy and short.
"Ah! Bloody hell!" She shrieked as she stepped into the surf, the cold temperature a violent shock. "It's shitting taters! Fuck!"
Charles himself was laughing at her reaction openly, despite the fact he too was stiffened against the painful shock of the waves, because it was entirely predictable for her to react that way. She always had. Although, even he couldn't keep in a shuddering gasp as the crashing wave made contact with his crotch.
"Bloody 'ell, Charles!"
"Oh, come on!" He waded in past her, pushing his board ahead of him as Tony frolicked excitedly around them. "It's not that bad!"
"Not that bad?!" She stood, unevenly, trying to wade in but the shock of the water hitting her thighs. "Charles, your nads must be almost fallin' off!"
Charles was now thigh deep, which was even deeper for her, given their height difference. He grinned at her. "Hasn't happened yet! Now, come on, Dawes, dig in! Whoever gets the most stands on the board pays for fish and chips later."
They were always a rather competitive couple and he knew what he was doing with such a challenge. Immediately, she turned into the soldier he knew her as, pushing her board in front of her and turning to eye up the upcoming waves.
"Oh, you're on, you crazy bastard!"
To say Molly was rusty was an understatement. There were only ten or so other surfers out in the water, stretching for a mile or two down the expansive beach. The Coastguard's flags were out, but notably they were sheltering in their SUV, toasty and warm. God, Molly bloody envied them.
The sun made a very occasional appearance, but it was mostly thick overcast, adding more chill to the wind. Molly watched, sulking, as Charles caught his first wave with infuriating ease, though he did fall from his board once he lost balance in the shallows. Tiny frolicked in the shallower water, barking happily as her owner came closer and then promptly doggie paddled after him.
"Molly! Great one, incoming!"
She turned with enough time to eat the approaching shell of a wave and got herself on the board with enough notice - albeit far from elegantly. She desperately tried to recall her lessons from Charles years ago through gritted teeth, but barely managed to gain her balance on the wave before sliding off, now fully in the water with a whoop of surprise.
Charles paddled himself over on his board and pulled her up by the arm.
"Alright?" Content she was, he gave her a patient, what he hoped was a neutral look as he offered to help. "You need to make sure you're on the board already," he said, "and make sure you're parallel to the board when the wave first picks you up."
She rolled her eyes and attempted to get on the board. Before he took a moment to consider what he was doing, his hand circled her bicep and used his strong grip to help hoist her up, his other hand on her waist. Momentarily, she lost all direction of thought and became acutely aware only of his hands.
"Y'alright, mate," she said dismissively as he retracted his hands. "I'm a pro, me."
Charles snorted, wooden for a moment as that strange awkward tension settled between them again even beneath the sound of wind and sea, before rotating to look at the impending wave as they both rocked over a smaller one. "Incoming, Dawesy!"
She watched him, momentarily stuck a little dumb by his use of such an old nickname, as he prepared for the wave, lying flat on the board and when the wave arrived, paddling like hell and dipping the nose forward and leaping to his feet in an elegant crouch.
"Oh, you bloody show off!" She yelled over the wind at his retreating figure. She attempted to imitate, but fell four feet short as he rode the momentum nearly all the way to the shore, where Tiny was chasing seagulls.
Molly's next attempt, Charles stayed behind floating, sitting with his thighs astride the board, legs buried knee-deep in the water as he watched her technique. She felt the power of the wave under her this time and while narrowly almost overstepping her balance, managed finally to stand… though only for a foot or two before giving in to falling sideways slowly back into the water.
"Yes, Molly!" She heard the encouragement on the wind and turned toward it with a grin before she could catch herself. "You swear you haven't been practicing?!"
"Oh, frigg off, you smug git!"
As she paddled back toward him, she felt her mood lift at the rhythm of his laughter on the wind. As she whipped salt water from her eyes, tails of her hair beginning to get wet where they fell from the bun, she took a breath of the chilled air and felt the invigoration of it. With minimal chat between them, bar the occasional half-hearted jibe, they well into the joyfully mindless to-and-fro of chasing each corker of a wave as it came and went. Charles' joy upon catching waves, and for when Molly managed to ride one right to the shore, became increasingly apparent as he whooped excitedly during each flight. Molly found she did the same with each increasingly successful wave.
"God, this is bloody knackering," she puffed as she waded back into the depths, now well up to the height of her waist, just beneath her breasts. Long numb to the temperature, she grinned with the adrenaline of such a freeing kind of physical exhaustion, relieved her pain was still currently subdued by painkillers and distraction.
"Too right," Charles agreed, he himself a little short of breath, though enviably less so. Wistfully, he looked out at the horizon as the sea rolled them, lazily. "I just love how infinite it feels out here."
Looking around, she took in the expansive Cornish coastline and the grit of the sea air and agreed with him, it was freeing - like another world, in a way, removed from reality. For all of the beauty of Cornwall's geography though, she found her eyes were drawn back to Charles. She had to admit, he did look different, now: worn, somehow, like he had seen the end of the earth and somehow made it back. But, most devastatingly, he still had his undeniable beauty… and in the bouncing light off a spring afternoon at sea, it was never more prevalent. Natural light reflecting off the sharp, sculpted planes of his face, his dark eyes had a lightness to them here with the contrast of the dark indigo grey of the ocean spray. His skin was a deeper tan, she recalled before he was entirely covered by the wetsuit as he was now, than she remembered, reflecting his time spent outdoors. It was only then that noticed the glint of his wedding ring, clear as day, on his left hand.
Had that been there the entire time?
She assumed at that moment it must have been, by the look of the tan line that outlined it, so much was her distress and distraction when she'd arrived, she supposed, she just hadn't noticed. Unconsciously, she flexed her thumb against where her wedding had once sat, under the water.
So much about this new version of Charles was so hard to compute with the last version of him she had known, and yet so much of him now, today, before her here, was reminiscent of the version of Charles she had been married to before Elvis had died. Could the two versions of him co-exist? And if they couldn't, could she handle knowing the man that was a new and irrevocably contradictory version of the man she had once loved more than anything in her life?
At this exact moment, she had no idea. How could someone who left her so utterly traumatised, untrusting and depressed… be the same man who kept every single souvenir of her existence like holy relics, even now?
"Why did you keep my smelly beach shoes?"
She wasn't sure why she asked it, or where the words came from, but the sight of those bloody things seemed imprinted on her mind, feeling almost as symbolic in some bizarre way as the ring he still wore on his finger.
He did a double take, surprised to hear her speak after an extended period of companionable silence and, also, taken aback by her question. He cleared his throat, squinting into the strip of sun that had now broken through the clouds.
"I, um…" He was suddenly looking everywhere but at her. "I couldn't get rid of anything. I just… After I came home to all your things gone at the house, I… It was all I could do to keep finding pieces of you that proved to my brain that what we had…" His voice wavered. "…What I destroyed, was ever there at all, because everything was so…dark. It was hard to remember there were ever good things." He was frowning intensely as the water rolled them both to the side, looking down at his hands and Molly wondered she self consciously if he was truly with her now, or somewhere else inside his head. "It was… Everything was so mixed up then in my head… It was excruciating, each time I'd stumble across your beach stuff or your toiletries or to find your rings you left behind…" He face flushed a little, realising momentarily that he had hinted to his keeping of her sanitary pouch. "But I… It helped me to remember every time, what I'd lost." He stole a glance at her as she watched him with unflinching, determined curiosity. She was pensive, attempting to appear neutral, but he could feel the tension of sadness radiating from her. "And if I remembered what we had then I had something to get better for."
She was blinking ferociously, her eyes burning with tears she refused to shed as she yanked at the damn sleeves of her wetsuit, rolls of material sticking with friction against her skin. God, how many tears would there be? Could there be, from one person? She had no idea sometimes how her body had any left to give, nor the energy to give them.
"Meanwhile, you crushed me into such a clusterfuck I couldn't even let myself think of you," she murmured breathlessly, her voice barely audible over the crashing of the waves and the whoosh of the fresh Spring wind. "I would just…break," she expanded, her voice brittle as though she was parched, "every time."
The words bounce around her head with a froth our self pity and envy that she couldn't have been as strong as to be so philosophical about the whole damn thing.
"How is it you can be the cause of our destruction and be so much less affected?"
Suddenly, he was right in front of her, turning her physically with his hands as close as their boards would allow. His forceful contact silenced her frustrations as he was looking at her with an expression that was heavy with pain - guilt and disappointment shining so clear in his eyes that it stopped all thought of the damn ocean. It was only in seeing the agony and concern reflected in the look in his eyes that she realised she had actually said that last sentence out loud.
Before she could let him address it, she did what she always did and turned to flee – though, this time, the only escape was to pretend she suddenly saw the most perfect wave to surf. She threw herself forward and onto the incoming wave before he could stop her, sounds of his protest a fleeting sound in the wind very quickly. She felt her stomach drop as she realised just how high the wave rose, the increasing wind rousing the current more violently than when they were first out on the water. In all honesty, she knew from the minute she tried to get up on the wave that she wasn't adequately centred on the board. Like the sickening feeling of watching yourself fall over a curb in slow motion, she felt her weight tip too far forward onto her toes and knew she was going to go over, headfirst into the height of the wave.
What she hadn't anticipated was that the board would shoot out backwards, propelled by the opposite forces of her weight falling forwards, and spring back like a bungee, thanks to the ankle cord, striking her hard on the back of the head just before she entered the water.
Before she had time to right herself or process the dizziness, the awful fuzziness that pings around the brain like static on an old TV screen after a bump on the head, she was submerged in the water, immediately kicking hard to try and find the sea floor to go back up to break the surface. She panicked somewhat when she didn't find the floor right away – they must have floated deeper in the ocean on their boards than she had realised – and her lungs launched prematurely for an urgent gulp of air. Greeted instead with a lungful of sea water, she kicked madly, dizzily trying to right her sense of up and down, right and wrong, air and sea.
"Molly!"
Just as she broke finally above water, unable to catch a breath that wasn't full also of water, a familiar pair of strong, unforgiving hands had her under the armpits, then around the rib cage to sure her head above water. She heaved for air, but the salt water burned her throat and she all but gagged as she coughed so violently.
"It's alright! I've got you," he said with a breathless urgency, his voice hard with stress but also with worry as he used his body to hold her up without a second thought. She was hacking up her guts, spitting into the water, as she tried desperately to finally get a clean breath. "It's okay." This time his voice was softer as he drove his palm down hard, three times, between her shoulder blades to help clear her windpipe. "I'm here, I've got you. Just breathe."
Feeling more woozy from the adrenaline of panic than from the bump on the head, she didn't seem to notice or care that he now had her entirely in his hold, gripping vicelike to her waist with large hands bracketing her rib cage under the water, legs bracketing her kicking ones, his breath coming face and shaking against her hairline as she seemed to hold her close.
"Are you hurt?!"
His tone was entirely that of an Army captain not to be messed with, one hand leaving her side to feel around the back of her head for signs of visible injury or blood. She allowed herself to rest her head against his shoulder for a long moment, still making hacking cough noises, as she closed her eyes against the sting of salt water down her face from her now drenched hair.
"No," she mumbled, wincing a little, still disorientated as much as she was now beginning to feel embarrassed, hiding her face from him. "Don't think so, much. Board bloody tried, though."
Bubbling with tension and trying desperately to slow his sickeningly racing heart rate, Charles gritted his teeth, anger, frustration, panic and hysteria all whirling in his nerves like a bubbling chemical reaction.
"It's not funny. What were you doing?!" He didn't let her go, but his voice was indignant. "You have to be more careful, Molly. Jesus!"
"Don't shout at me!" She yelled openly back at him, trying to push herself out of his hold, the comfort spell brought on by his touch broken. "I ain't stupid – or one of your squaddies!"
The anger was a cover, of course, for just how much he had been so sickeningly panicked, watching as the board hit her and she didn't come straight back up, convinced momentarily she may drown, that he currently wanted to vomit. Rather than show that vulnerability though, his immediate autopilot was so fire off in fury, irate at her ability to make him feel so much, for her to be so all-consumingly the source of his reason for existence…and yet for her to still dare to question whether he was as affected by the loss of her, of what they were once.
He was pulling her, her weight against his side, through the water and out onto the shore, Tiny barking in greeting where she'd been obediently sitting in the shallows trying to chase waves as they crashed in the sand. Molly tried to pull away, to walk on her own two feet without assistance, noting that the fellow surfers a hundred yards away were now openly looking over at them, having heard their shouting.
"Charles," her cheeks burned. "Let go! I can walk on my own!"
Conversely, his grip tightened on her waist. "Not a chance."
"Charles—!"
"—Damn it, Molly, will you just, for once, not fight me when I'm trying to care for you!"
There it was, really, the crux of what differentiated them, even in the old days. He always pushing and she always testing boundaries with a foot already out the door in case she needed to pull away.
She was struck a little dumb by his outburst and walked stiffly, stubbornly, feet a little numb, beside him as he managed to fit both surfboards under his other arm and lead them both, rather quickly given his long stride, back to the car. He still had a hand around her arm like an errant child who might wonder off and at the Defender, he wouldn't now look at her. He told Tiny to get into the boot in a cold, emotionless voice that told her of the anger he was holding in. It was a look she long recognised as his sulking phase, as his expression became fixed – an indifferent Army mask. There was a horrible, rigid silence between them as he busied himself towel drying the dog despite the increased afternoon chill in the air and she felt her heart staggering with anxiety, rubbing her arm where it still felt like his iron grip was still around her bicep.
"What? So you're not talking to me now?" She couldn't help it, it had always been her weakness that she couldn't leave him alone when he was like this. She always had to goad the beast, always had to have the last word.
He didn't respond, instead turning away from her and pulling down his wetsuit zip, stripping his arms from the sleeves with indignation in jerking movements, his strength coiling the muscles in his back and triceps visibly as he moved.
"Oh, good to see we're back to old habits. That's real mature, Charles. All I did was accidentally face dive off the board—!"
"—No, what you did was run off during a difficult conversation and put yourself in a reckless position as a result, without thinking about how said reckless behaviour affects those whose entire reason for living is you!"
The words lacked finesse and came out in the rush one of breath, but he suddenly turned, his taut posture clear. She squinted against the wind, very subtly trembling with the cold as it started to register and realised he was visibly shaking – too much though, enough that he seemed to be struggling with the difficulties of ridding himself of his suit. She made a sound of confusion, but things began to slot into place – the similarities of this moment and the one in his kitchen earlier suddenly obvious.
This was his anxiety - for her, around mortality, around death, panic – circling him and making him snappy. Suddenly, it was blatantly clear.
"Charles," she murmured over the wind, summoning her very best student nurse patience. "I'm fine, I'm alrigh'."
"You think I'm less affected?" His voice sounded rough, throwing them back to the conversation that triggered this last sequence of events. The tone that could so often sound so cold and so certain was almost strangled on the wind as he seemed to wheeze a bit, pulling his hand roughly through his hair, suddenly looking at her with eyes that were afire with frustration, his wetsuit forgotten. That one comment from her had sent him into a spiral of disappointment, frustration and sadness, which was now pushed over the edge by the sight of her disappearing, pale and flailing, under the water. "How can you think that?"
Suddenly, she is faced with his semi-nakedness right up close, his tanned chest most definitely more built up than she remembered it, the defined curves of his shoulders and bulked up biceps noticeable. Had he always had those defined tendons that stood out down his biceps?
Her first instinct had been right, then: he had been working out. An inappropriate but unavoidable distraction.
"Of course you fucking are," she struggled, knowing was being immature as she had to turn away from him, hating to see such a physical reminder that he was doing so healthily and well, when she struggled not to drink herself stupid far too often. "Look at you!"
He just looked at her, breathing heavily and with wide eyes and a frown that implied utter exasperated confusion. Her voice had risen, but with few out in such changeable weather, anyone close enough to overhear was far enough away to not cross the thoughts of either of them.
"What?" Suddenly, she thought he might cry, right then, his arms across his own middle in a self conscious posture that struck her as entirely out of character for the man she knew – or used to know. "After all this time," he followed. "How can you think that?!"
"What? Doubt you?" She sneered, looking stubbornly at the horizon, her own arms tight around herself. "Oh, I dun'no, perhaps it's 'cause you caught feelings for my best fucking friend and shagged her on tour!" The words came out furious, loud, croaked.
"I know what I did!" The shouted retort came out of him in a sudden, unexpectedly loud rush over the wind, silencing her and drawing her eyes to him in a sudden shock. "Okay, here it is: I know that I destroyed us and Lord knows that every day my brain reminds me of all the things that I despise myself for like a knife in my chest. It takes all the energy I have every day since you left me not to act on that self hatred, every moment of every day, because of what I did!"
The words suddenly poured out of him quickly, like a fast cascade of water that would flatten anything it's path, leaving her heart pouring in her ears. They both ignored the increasing howl of the wind, unable to do anything but tangle themselves further into this painful exchange.
"I know that I destroyed the version of myself that you loved, and you, with my illness, all because I couldn't face it and I can't - and probably never will - forgive myself! I can never know entirely what it was like for you, but I can see what I've done – how much weight you've lost, the way that you look at me like I'm a minefield about to blow at any moment and it…kills me." His breathing was coming irregularly now, like someone blocking out tears with everything they have. "But to doubt how much I love you, have loved you… How are you everything..." The word was breathy as he momentarily seemed to run out of steam. "I can't sleep, I don't enjoy food, I force myself into the basics of human interaction when, most days, I feel nothing, just so I won't crumble into tears in public." His face twisted in the one a person's did when they were compressing guttural instincts and sneering at their own emotions. "I tell you none of this for sympathy but because I can see it now: what I am, how ill I was. I did this us as much as any PTSD did." He gestured between them and pointed his finger at nothing particularly, the words coming fast as she watched the chicken flesh of goosebumps rise all over his naked chest in the howling wind. "My arrogance. My desire to always be the man in uniform you so admired. I refused to believe I could be infallible enough to succumb to such a stereotype. But then I gave you so much indifference that it - of course! - gave you so much to doubt… and you took that doubt and ran… and became your stereotype… because that is the endearing, self-deprecating person you always were. The person I loved."
A painful lump seemed to block her throat in acknowledgment of such harsh truths.
He shrugged tearfully, looking her square in the face with openly watering eyes. "I gave you the very thing I said I never would…". He was shaking his head, his wet curls, now a tousled mess, bouncing droplets of sea water as he did so. "You always doubted how much I could love you in the old days, but I thought long ago we were passed that, but then—."
"—Because it made no sense for you to love me!" The interruption came out almost shrill as her voice was high and croaky – like it came from the deepest, most buried, youthful part of her. The teenager that never felt she would be worthy. "It never did, and yet—"
"And yet, I did…" He suddenly looked exhausted, as though he had no emotions left. "Enough that it never bothered me that you didn't believe it." Suddenly, his expression twisted to something so bleak that she took a step closer to him. "Enough that I wanted to die when I realised I had well and truly lost you," he finished, his voice suddenly quiet as it could be over the crash of distant waves.
He was now leaning into the open back seat door of the car, his elbows bracketing the doorframe, leaning in to it with his back to her as he hung his head, out of view. The posture alone made all her anger disintegrate, but the cracked, tear-choked tone with which he said the next four words neutralised it entirely to empathy and desolate heartbreak.
"I did," he repeated, "I do."
Her vision blurred as she blinked away her more sudden, errant tears. It hurt so much to hear declarations of love, enough that she lost her words, because it just wasn't fair. Not of this was.
She was shivering against the wind now and immediately found her feet launching her to him, touching his bare back with her hand, grabbing at his arm to try and turn him to look at all.
"Charles…" she began, but whatever train of thought she had been on died after she closed her fingers around his forearm.
He tried to pull back, but she felt something, something that was new, that hadn't ever been there before and, in one brief moment of absentminded curiosity, look down at the skin under her touch as she turned him toward her - and that's when she saw it. The something he never intended her to see.
It was something many may have missed, especially if he was careful with his clothing choices, or something that those in ignorance or denial may choose to excuse away… but there was no mistaking it for her, her medic background as it was.
Six, maybe seven, neat, stark lines on his forearm, just up from his wrist.
Pink and unnaturally white against his tan, indicating relatively fresh healing. One, maybe two, years old, give or take.
Not perfect, but definitely parallel, deliberate, violent lines.
Raised, pronounced… meaning the cuts had been deep. No accident.
The now-lifelong braille telling the ultimate tale of his suffering.
She could hear her own breathing come loudly as in an exhale of shock, struggling to get her lungs to take the breath that followed and simultaneously trying to neutralise her expression, as her medic training instructed.
Her brain flashed through the stages of grief in record time, trying to make what she had learned anything less than excruciating:
Shock.
She couldn't feel her own body, and watched as he no longer attempted to pull his hand away as he had automatically tried to in the half a second when she has grabbed it. It was second nature to him to hide it, then, at least to some people. She let go quickly as if she might hurt him.
"How—?" She didn't even manage the word, her body tensing of its own accord. "Is that—? Did you—?" Like someone jittery or on drugs, she looked everywhere and then back at him, but his eyes, themselves tear filled, were cast down at the ground. "Why did no one—?" She attempted a couple of other sentences, but none came out sounding like much more than garbled beginnings if phases and words, her voice shaking as much as she was. She all but launched herself two foot away to where the roll of the dune grass began, just behind the cover of the car, and suddenly felt as though she might throw up.
Why did no one tell her?
Next, Denial.
She was shaking her head, trying to speak, and when her brain focused enough to hear herself, she heard herself repeating the word "No", as silent as a prayer said only to herself and the universe. Captain Charles James, strongest man, mentally and all other ways besides, she had once ever known, attempt to take his own—?
No! She couldn't even think it. Her brain immediately went to the trauma of her own memories of blood; dirty and staining and copper, everywhere… And yet—
Then, as he reached for her: Anger.
"Molly—"
"How could you do that?!" The questions came in such a rushed jumble she had no idea if they were intelligible as she threw herself back to be beside him, adrenaline suddenly flooding her veins with the sheer fury of it, itchy, angry tears burning her eyes. After all he had done to her, all the negligence and the cruelty and the gaslighting when she had tried and tried to get so much help for him, burst to the surface. "Don't you know what you mean to people?! Did you not think of all it would do to every bloody person who loves you? Your mum? Me Nan? Sam?!" Suddenly, her throat felt like it was closing. Her voice lost all its volume. "Me? Do you not know what it would do to me if you died?!" She sobbed over the howl of the wind. "How it would have killed me?"
For the first time since, his voice, unrecognisably small and muffled by his hand, whimpered: "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I wasn't—I couldn't—."
"When?" She gasped out the question, her breathing beginning to hitch and staccato the words. She watched him react, closing his eyes tighter against what he knew was coming, but a tear escaped anyway. "When?!"
"I didn't ever want you to know," her murmured, low with shame and avoiding the question. "I didn't want it to hurt you. I knew it—I knew you'd want to take on blame, somehow—I didn't want you to feel obligated to come back out of pity—I made my mother swear—."
She suddenly gasped in realisation. It couldn't be, it couldn't be! But oh yes, her brain told her – oh yes, it could. She knew the cold hard truth of this tragedy was that for her to have not known about a single iota of it, it must have happened at the end.
It must have happened when he was alone. Because he was alone.
Once she had left him. Cut him off. Given up on helping him and left him, so she thought, to do what he wanted: to be with Georgie.
A deeply suffering, mentally ill man, coming home to an echoing, empty house and she had given him no way to reach his wife, and cut things off so violently as if she were dead, too. A man so lonely, so lost in his own head, because he lost his oldest friend, that that aloneness had pushed him to cut into his own flesh.
Aloneness that was only possible because she hadn't been there.
Then, all consuming: Sadness.
It hit her like the tidal wave, slamming into her chest with such force she couldn't see through eyes filled to the brim with tears that just fell, silently. She had tried so hard, lost so much of herself, trying to help him… and here was the proof, once and for all: the physical, violent, traumatising proof that she had failed.
Failed as a human to reach him, failed as a wife to protect him. Failed as a medic to help heal him.
The realisation is like a bullet wound to the flesh, sudden and breath-taking. She shook her head over and over as the hyperventilation of grief well and truly took over.
"Oh, shit, it was me." She made an almost inaudible sound of distress and grabbed the car for support for grabbing his trembling arm, waist, with both hands. "Oh, God," she whimpered in a tiny voice. "It was because of me. It was, wasn't it!"
Suddenly, he was looking at her, his head snapping round in a look that resembled surprise. Finally, he seemed to be responsive, his hands finding hers, then her face, urgently despite his distress.
"What? Molly! No!"
"How can't it be?!" Her voice is warped with the cadence of tears. "I left! I left knowing you jumped off a cliff an' I didn't—I wasn't there—"
He was shaking his head desperately, pulling her into the shelter of backseat doorframe, wind blocked now by his body. "No, Darling, no—"
Shame rolled from her in waves and she felt sick and dizzy as she let out tiny, repressed crying sounds, weeping with her face covered by her hands. "I thought you'd be better off without me," she murmured, barely understood behind her hands. "That you'd be with Her, but I left you to—oh, fuck—"
"Please don't cry for me," he whispered tearfully, nudging her up onto the backseat, aware enough to pull a towel from the footwell around her. "Oh, Molly, please, please, don't cry."
"Fuck, Charles," she whimpered, curling her knees against her chest as she climbed in after her, shutting the door to finally block out the cold. "What kind of wife, what kind of medic—?"
The warmth of the now enclosed space surrounded them in a gratefully comforting blanket, leaving their breath sounding loud around them. It was a tight squeeze, given the age of the car and Charles' height, but he folded himself around her immediately, his face suddenly pressing hard against hers.
"Stop it," he whispered, pleadingly. "None of this is on you!"
"But I left," she croaked, looking up to finally meet his wet eyes. "I left you."
"Because I left you first," he said, the words feeling like finality between them. Emotionally at least. "I gave you no choice."
Suddenly, neither had any words left worthy of voicing. For a long moment, they did nothing but hold one another, slouched over one another in the seat. despite the fact Molly was still completely in her wetsuit and Charles was naked to the waist. She allowed herself the pleasure of her face against the bare skin of his torso, never mind the chill of it from the sea water and brisk Spring air. She felt surrounded by him, his arms tight around her as she enjoyed allowing her fingers to finally smooth over him again, the skin on his waist taut and smooth, before letting her fingers push into the damp mass of his curls, textured all the more with the light coating of sea salt. It was going frizzy as it started to dry and she suddenly realised she was smiling to herself at the feeling of the coils pinging back from through her fingers with a therapeutic buoyancy.
With Tiny in the boot behind them making sounds of upset that she couldn't get to the sounds of upset from over the seats, they both turned, distracted.
"It's okay, girl," he murmured, his hand over the seats to stroke her furry head.
Molly sniffed dramatically, trying to push her emotions back into their box as her face flushed, feeling embarrassed as she pulled back. An exhausted, charged silence fell between them as they both tried to wipe their eyes and busy themselves with patting Tiny from over the seats.
"She's sweet," Molly said, quietly, trying to distract herself, her eyes wanting to tear back to the lines on his arm, stark as they were. She still had so many questions. "I always wanted a dog."
Charles leaned his head against the back of the seat, giving her a melancholy look through his lingering of his tears. "One of the many promises I should have kept."
She sighed, not fighting him on that point, because she couldn't.
They both knew that there were things they still had to address, the conversation far from over, but neither had the energy left. Slowly, she shuffled to sit up and asked him to help her undo her suit down the back before proceeding to attempt to yank it down and over her hips from her horizontal position across the backseat once Charles had climbed out to store away the boards. She grumbled to herself, still sniffing tearfully, as she tried to get the suit off. It stuck to her wet skin frustratingly stubbornly and she all but growled aloud. Suddenly, chilled air rushed into the car again as Charles opened the door. She immediately stopped struggling from her horizontal position and looked up at him, frozen in the compromising position with him high above her like a peering adult looking down over a baby's pram.
A moment passed before his smirk cracked into a snigger, eyes still puffy with tears, which meant inevitably Molly had to laugh at herself, too.
"Here," he chuckled. "Let me do the yanking bit."
She let out a snort of a snigger. "Oh, yeah?! Steady on! Bet you say that to all your wives."
She didn't help it, it was baked into her DNA for give one liners whether appropriate or not. His expression split into a grin, an expression as carefree as she had seen on his face for years, and it sent her pulse shuddering forward towards its next beat.
"Oh, you know," he hummed with amused, dry sarcasm as leaning to her ankle and started yanking. "Only the Cockney ones."
She enjoyed the sight of him pulling, a flex in his dominant arm muscles quite a sight that reminded her of the chiselled naked male statues from Italy Charles' mother loved so much. He truly didn't have any body fat at this point, even less than before, and it was bloody unfair.
"Jesus, Charles, 'ow do you ever get these bloody things off?"
"Just hold on!" She held onto the seat as he eased the wetsuit loose from the feet while she pushed from the hips, and finally it started to come off. She realised too late that from this position, she was most likely giving him far too much of a view, given her legs were up and beneath the wetsuit was a bikini.
"Sorry," she flushed, hotly, sitting up pushing his hands away to do the last bit herself. "Flashed you a bit."
Charles made a sound of indifference, but his face said he was feeling smug. "It's not exactly anything I haven't quite literally seen before, Molly."
"Hey!" She reported, though she couldn't help but laugh. "That ain't very gentlemanly!"
He had his lip between his teeth, trying to keep from laughing as he avoided her half hearted attempt at kicking him as he stood in the cold outsidethe car, ridding himself of his own wetsuit. "Who said I was a gentleman again?"
In these moments, the banter was easy and one would have been forgiven to have mistaken the dynamic between them as being just as it was in the old days.
Except it wasn't.
"Don't worry," he added gently, perhaps seeing this shift in her demeanour and mistaking it felt self consciousness about her body. "I'll avert my eyes. I promise."
If only she could promise to do the same was her first thought, as he said such a thing while pulling his own wetsuit from one foot and then the other. He was wearing small swim shorts beneath, the tight, mid thigh kind that looked like boxer briefs. The notable curve of him beneath the deep navy blue fabric was a sight she never thought she would see again and that her most heated dreams were filled with. Her mouth was suddenly dry as she attempted to dress in the back seat, catching sight of the fact he openly stripped behind the cover of the open car door, covering himself with a towel around his hips.
Stop it. She tried her very best not to look, berating herself for being such a pervert, trying to reason that this is the man who hurt her beyond recognition and did not deserve her attention… but, like clockwork, he got it all the same. At one point, she realised she would need more than one pair of hands to be able to hold the towel in place and put on a bra and after frustrating, restrictive moments, she sighed hard and gave in, turning away from him but letting the towel go in desperation.
"Oh fuck it," she sighed, the shock of the cold breeze from the open door on damp sensitive skin making her shiver. She became acutely aware of every inch of her own skin even as she was faced away from him with her breasts bare, trying to put on her dry underwear as quickly as possible as she noted out of the corner of her eye just how much of his was on show. There was once a time he would have reached to do the bra up for her, her mind reminded her masochistically, before she shoved the thought away.
As he leaned down to put on dry underwear in the doorway, she noted the movement in the corner of her eye as the towel inevitably slipped down and passed the area that was enviably tanned, giving show to the pale skin of his hip bone and hint of dark hair that could be found below—.
Stop it, Molly. Stop it!
Trying to get herself back into an emotional equilibrium, she shook her head and climbed into the front over the gearbox, fidgeting in her seat as she pulled on this West Ham shirt and her old joggers, refusing, willing herself not to look back at him again. "Right, I'm hank now," she said, too cheerfully as she wiped the remainder of salt from her eyes and attempted in vain to comb fingers through her soaked hair, hoping her voice was even and not telling of her affected breathlessness. "Fish an' chips — guess I'm buying', then?"