Pacifier

💔Isabelle🌹

It woke me in the witching hour. A sudden desperate sort of doom. Lodged in my chest and choking me.
I didn't shoot up in my bed but my eyes opened with a start and then it washed over me, weighed me down. I lay there on my back, wide eyed gazing hopelessly at the ceiling and I just knew.

"Van," I whispered, my hand finding his arm under the covers which had been wrapped around us.

I'd fallen asleep on his chest but at some point in the night I'd shifted and now I lay with my head on his chest but my body slipping from him, one leg still entangled with his. I could feel the dull ache of pain returning to my shoulder and in my hip, but the fear I felt curdling in my chest and my stomach drowned that out.

When my heart raced and my breathing sharpened Van stirred, something in my discomfort reaching him in his sleep. Perhaps he hadn't been sleeping particularly deeply at all.

"What is it love?" he was sleepy, lazy and laid back but the edge in my voice stirred him enough that he sat up almost straight away, taking me with him, apologising when the sleep left him and he remembered my injuries. When he saw me wince through the darkness. His fingers grazed my cheek, pushing some hair from my eyes as he tried to look into them, tried to read me in the dark.

"Somets happened," I said too panicked too overwhelmed by my sense of despair to realise how daft that might sound when said allowed. "Somet really bads happened," I said and Van frowned, his hand which had been holding my shoulder smoothing down my arm, gentle as he reached for my hand and intertwined our fingers.

"What's happened?" he asked again frowning, a little confused, a little concerned. One arm around me holding me in place in his lap so that when I tried to scramble away from him, pull on my clothes and leave the way I was certain we needed to, I couldn't. "Hey sugar, sugar cmon calm down you gotta tell me what's wrong before you go running away from me yeah..." he said, his voice still sleepy and level, too calm. Too calm for the way I was feeling. I didn't see his other hand reaching slowly behind him for the gun he kept in the bedside table.

I couldn't work out how to tell him, didn't have any words, didn't know how to describe the certainty of the feeling which had awoken me in the middle of the night like that.

But when I stilled, when I looked up at him and my eyes brimmed and then clouded over with tears, he understood.

"Somets happened to Johnny," I said my voice trembling, my composure crumbling then so that the first tear spilled like the first drop of rain before the lightning strikes.

"No love," he sighed, surprising me when he lay back down, leant back against the head board and took me with him, his arms secure around me as he stroked my hair down my back. "Sweetheart it was probably just a bad dream or somet given you a scare, you can't possibly know anythings happened..." he started his smile soft, his eyes tired, too dismissive.

"I do!" I snapped back, fierce. Surprising him just as he had surprised me. "Listen to me Van we have to go back we have to help him somet horribles happened I know it has!" I said, the tears in my eyes making it difficult for me to see when his frown etched a little deeper. When my hands pushing back against his chest trying to aid my escape from his warm embrace felt strong against him. Fierce with my fear and my stubborn nature.

The tears in my eyes stopped me seeing the moment his demeanour changed. When he realised what I wanted and what I didn't understand.
And I did understand it really, it was just that in that moment my heartbreak, my fear, the delirium of the painkillers he'd given me and the pain itself, swept me up. I was a rush of emotion and I wasn't a rational girl.

And I didn't see it when he changed. When all confusion replaced with sympathy and a sigh.

"Izzy no baby," he said suddenly more soft than he had ever been with me before, gentle like he was stepping around something delicate. Something he was scared to see me understand. "No sugar that's not how this works," he said, cradling me against his chest, his hand with his fingers twisting gently through my hair. When he spoke his voice was thick with sympathy, left me feeling heavy and scorned. Left me feeling like I didn't want his sympathy, I wanted the fight he'd shown for me to run away with me. Wanted to see that threatening determination for my brother now in the hour of need I was certain of. But I didn't see it, instead I saw conflict and quiet defeat and he let me down. I didn't realise at the time that it killed him to do it.