Broken- And Fixed Again- (A Jamilton Fanfic)

Chapter 29: Flowers and Love Notes

//TW: self harm, depression, self-loathing, ptsd, swearing\\

Thomas

Just breathe.

I'm not quite sure how many times I had told myself that simple rhetoric, repeating it over and over until the words no longer made sense. They had been completely bent and changed until they no longer resembled what they had been before. They became shadows. Meaningless, empty shadows.

But I whispered them to myself relentlessly as I stared at the blank and unchanging wall, because if
I could focus solely on those two words, then I didn't have to think about the other thoughts slowly worming their way into my head and my mind. If I could focus on those two, simple-enough words, then I didn't have to let those dreadful, nightmarish murmurs corrupt what was left of my sanity.

Just breathe.

It was becoming harder and harder to do the more I repeated that singular notion. The thought of breathing only did so much when submerged underwater for so long. It danced out of my reach, the false trappings of peace.

From behind me, Alexander's chest rose and fell at a steady pace. It was almost rhythmic in a way, and it eased my heavy heart a little just listening to its gentle tones and inflections. And combined with the warmth seeping through my skin from where his hands encircled my waist, it should have been easy to surrender myself over to the engulfment of love and happiness, but for whatever reason, I was still running away from it all. Even with Alexander behind me, gripping onto my body as if I was drifting away in the vast sea of cosmos surrounding us, I could not lose myself to his touch the way I should have been able to.

Just breathe.

In and out. In and out. Over and over. A repeating process. In and out. In and out.

But my lungs were ablaze, sparked by the few embers that continued to smolder in my mind even long after the wildfire had died out. My lungs burned and I could not breathe and it seemed like this never ending story of pain would forever repeat itself through me, using my body as a vessel for its satisfaction. I cannot be happy on my own. I do not deserve it, I do not deserve it, I do not deserve it—

Stop.

I stopped. I returned to those two words, murmuring through my mind. I poured all of my energy behind memorizing those two words and the feeling of their weight on my tongue. I cast them as the centerpiece of the garden I was just beginning to repair, and there they would stay until I no longer needed the crutch they proposed.

I lay in bed, restlessly, but frozen by the warmth of Alexander's touch spreading through me. I refused to move, even as my skin itched to feel the gentle brush of the breeze's gentle fingers against me once more. I ached for the stars, but there would be none tonight. For I knew the second I got up to find them, to search out their calming relief, I would not return to bed, and my hands would inevitably find the knives hidden away from me. And what's worse, Alexander would eventually wake up with a start, with terror chasing him like lightning, and he would be so, so scared. And I could not do that to him, not again. Not when he deserved so much more.

Painful hours passed, but dawn eventually broke over the world, its pink and orange glow fracturing through the windows dusted with that morning glaze. The light poured in through the room, making it seem ethereal, making it seem much better than the rest of the world was. Outside, the birds chirped their sweet songs, heralding the sunrise and all the beauty it bathed us all in. For a moment, it seemed like the truth of it all was hidden in the folds and the shadows that the sunbeams created, and the world became one born of stained glass and artistry, the same artistry we ourselves had been crafted with.