Broken- And Fixed Again- (A Jamilton Fanfic)

Chapter 17: Waking Nightmares (part 2)

//TW: rape, abuse, suicide, PTSD and trauma, graphic violence, swearing\\

Alexander

The light blurred my vision as I stared down at the impossibly blank piece of paper, its numerous empty lines mocking me. Forced to listen only to the whirlwind of my thoughts accompanied by the beating of my heart, I lost the ability to think. It hurt to breathe, to listen, to watch as the world spun and spun around me, fully aware I could do absolutely nothing to stop it, to prevent it. All I could really do was sit back and watch, and let it toss me around in the perpetual hurricane my life had become without that one, solid, burst of light that had faded just as quickly as it had come.

God, I missed him. I missed his smile, his presence, his being. I missed waking up every morning to find him firmly curled around my body.

Two dots of water stained the page, and I glanced upwards at the monochromatic, dull ceiling to chase away those traitorous tears. Tonight wasn't the night for this, and my mind was so tired of allowing those thousands of thoughts to occupy the voices within my head. More than anything, I wanted to cave and allow those thoughts to consume me, as long as it meant I didn't have to spend one more moment dreading what awaits me as soon as I close my eyes, as soon as sleep catches up to me.

You already know what haunts me as soon as I close my eyes and let my mind drift off. You already know that I dream about the one person I care about more than anything laying lifeless in my arms. And I can't take comfort in waking up, as he isn't curled up besides me anymore, and so he could really be dead and I wouldn't know.

I dread falling asleep. I dread witnessing his death over and over. And every single fucking time, it gets worse. I don't know how, but it always descends, always ends with my useless sobbing. My arms might as well be chained to a stone floor, my body forever lost to an empty room, as I stand there and stare at the lifeless corpse of the person I would steal the moon and the stars for, if it meant seeing him happy within my arms.

Some of the things I've seen, the bursts of violence forever burned into my memory, chase me out of the dreams and into the waking world and taunt my every moment where I haven't thrown myself into writing. They are scenes far more gruesome than I thought my mind was ever capable of dreaming up, forcing me to wonder if I truly am as good as I had always hoped to be. They seem more like prophetic visions then they do the mindless wandering of my brain as my body rests, and that single possibility terrifies me to no end.

What do I do when I wake up, only to find that it is true? What do I do when the world around me crumbles into fine grains of sand light enough to be carried away by an unforgiving wind? What do I do when Thomas's name becomes a memory, a distant whisper in my ears as his soul fades, his life once more unreachable.

More tears dotted the page. I shook them away, forced myself to breathe. Breathing is the hardest thing in the world, sometimes. And yet it's all that we're told, the only word of comfort we get and give some times. How fucked up is that? That something so natural can be so fucking difficult?

So I try not to sleep. I try to stay awake. I try not to let myself drift off. I don't want to fall asleep only to wake up drenched in a cold sweat. There's no point.

It's an endless cycle that I simply cannot fall into anymore. A game I just do not have the strength to play.

Unfortunately, I can't always just stay awake.

Sometimes my brain just lets go of reality, desperate to find a world where everything makes sense, desperate go create a place where the inconsistencies fade away and there is nothing but me and my Thomas and the eternal starlight beaming down upon us. I hunger for this parallel universe, the one where our lives and our paths joined together, instead of crossing once in a brilliant forest filled with life, only to have them veer off, leading us down paths where the sun can never reach us and the starlight can never shine.