Sparkling Diamonds

I closed my eyes and let out a deep breath. As I did so, Felt something escaping me…like a tightness in my chest finally getting the relaxation that it needed. I felt myself smiling, subconsciously happy, for the first time in a long time.

Soon enough, I caught myself and pulled away from Benedict and shoving myself further back across the desk. He almost fell onto it if he didn't catch himself on the edge. He looked up to me, confused but understanding after a while.

"i'm sorry…" he said to me. "I'm too forward for my own good sometimes."

"No," I said, letting the word hang there for a little longer then I intended. "You don't know how much I needed that."

He smiled at me and extended his hand in between us, palm facing upwards, when he said, "Are you sure you aren't free tonight?"

I pursed my lips, thinking a moment, and made my decision, saying, "I would appreciate dining with you tonight, Mr. Cumberbatch, but I have already spent the night away from my husband. Two nights in a row would make him suspicious."

"When will he leave so I can finally see you?" Benedict asked, his hand still upturned between us. "Surely there will be a time when he won't be around."

"He will be back in Manchester next Thursday," I commented.

"A week from now," he said. "Let's make it a date?"

I looked down at his hand and took it, saying, "You can count on it."

And with that, Benedict was off in a flash and leaving me by myself. I looked around me in the lonely room, suddenly feeling cold and alone. Suddenly, I wished I had accepted Ben's date offer for tonight as I don't think I wanted to see my husband again. That was like every night when he was back in London, however. Meeting Ben just changed things all around, making me doubt what I had become used to.

I packed up my things off my desk as I thought about what pain my husband would be inflicting on me tonight. Would he be home when I got there? Or would he already be at the pub catching up with some old friends of his that he hadn't seen while he was in Manchester.

Whatever it may be, I just wanted to avoid him at all costs. Ben was on my mind and I would try to keep him there as I made my way home to the pain and the suffering I expected to endure when I walked through that front door.

It had cooled down outside when I stepped out of the building and made my way back two blocks to my apartment building. I kept my head lowered and my arms around my body as I pushed through the people on their way homes. The streets were full of taxi's and cars trying to get to various destinations.

Upon reaching the door to the foyer of my building, I had to pause a moment to brace myself. This was really the last chance I had to make that choice of feeling over to Eliza or Bianca's apartments or heading up to my own.

I knew that I couldn't bother Eliza tonight as she was on her date with Martin. The last thing I wanted to do was interrupt anything that was going on between them. I was happy that Eliza had found someone that she was interested in and very glad at the fact that her possible relationship with him didn't take away from the friendship between her, Bianca and I.

Bianca would accept me gratefully but I knew deep down that I needed to be back at home otherwise there would be two days of beatings waiting for me and only God knows what that would be like.

I headed into the foyer of my apartment building and took the elevator up to my floor. I took out my keys with shaking, sweating fingers and opened the door in front of me before silently closing it behind me.

I looked around the apartment, placing the bag that I had taken two nights ago back where I found it but only taking the clothes out to be washed. I put it in the basket of things to be cleaned and quietly snuck around the house to the bedroom. The bathroom was empty but the bed was unkept, my husband obviously leaving it up to me to fix it up.

I walked into the bedroom with a little more confidence but that was pulled all the way out of me when my husband pulled me across the room from where he was hiding and slammed me against the wall. I blacked out a second as he wrapped his callused fingers around my neck.

His black eyes glared into my own as he was breathing heavy, his alcoholic breath washing over me. It was disgusting, he smelt, and I just wanted to get away. I closed my eyes and tried to cast my mind out to another place so that I didn't have to be full conscious when the typical events that followed occurred.

Instead of creating a whole new world around me, Ben came to the front. He was standing alone on the curb of the street opposite me with his hands in his pockets. He was dressed handsomely, in a coat that hung around his knees, a shirt that bought out his eyes and a pair of black trousers

The wind that rushed through the empty street of London that I did not recognise tousled his hair lightly as snow sprinkled his locks. There was a blank look upon his face as I tried to search his face for emotion. There were laugh lines etched around his lips and at the corner of his eyes that would only be excentuated when he smiled.

Benedict pulled one of his hands out of his pockets and held it out to me. His showed something that his face was trying to hide. Come, his eyes were saying. Come, and I will protect you. Despite how I wanted to, and how I tried to cross that street to him, I felt as if I was being held back by something.

I turned around to find a ghostly figure standing behind me. It was shrouded in smoke, wisps of grey and black distorting its features. It seemed as if it was the typical representation of death, trying to reach out to me as Benedict was. I was torn between the to, despite how much I was willing myself away from this death like character and towards Benedict very much seemed like life in that moment.

I let out a cry of pain, but no sound escaped my lips. I as wordless as the world around me seemed to distort and I felt the pressure of the air pressing against my ears. It felt like there were two big metal clampers pressing against my head and squishing everything between it.

The next thing I knew, I was brought back into the world and lying my side upon the floor of the bedroom. I saw my husband step over me, dressed to go out to the pub tonight. He spat on me as he left. There was a moment silence before I heard him slam the front door shut behind him.

Slowly, I began to feel all the pain that he had caused me rush through my body. I groaned as blood from one of my temples slid over my eye and caused me to close them. I tried to move my arms so I could feel for my mobile or something to get in contact with an ambulance…no, he wouldn't approve of that. Bianca, maybe? That would work.

As I tried to get my mobile, I felt my arms snap even further then what I realised it was. I screamed at the top of my lungs as I opened one eye that wasn't covered in blood to see that my left arm had been broken in the beating I had received.

I bit down on my lip as I used my other, only bruised arm to grab the mobile phone I carried in my back pocket. When I retrieved it, I pulled it out in front of me and searched through the contacts to Bianca's number.

What surprised me was the fact that I found Benedict's number in there. I could't remember how his number got in there because I don't remember exchanging phones for it to happen. Might it have been during our hug? However it got in there, I didn't really care at that moment because the next thing I knew was that I was calling Benedict instead of Bianca, my intended caller.

I swore under my breath as I switched the call to loudspeaker.

"I'm sorry, Benedict Cumberbatch is unable to come to the phone right now, please leave a message after the tone--" said a voice that sounded nothing like a voice machine. "Beep!"

Whoever picked up the phone was about to hang up when I screamed out, "Help me!"

Everything went silent as I felt myself, for the first time in a long time, emotion welling up within me. I was so desperate for someone else to know, outside Eliza and Bianca who were helpless to do anything against my husband. Benedict was like a last point of call…there was no way that I would go to the police because my husband would just deny everything that happened, despite the hard evidence that was found on my body.

"Help me…" I whimpered as I rested my forehead upon the floor. "Ben, please."

The silence drew out longer when the kindest voice purred through the telephone, "Diana?" I made some sort of noise, indescribable to either of our ears. "Diana, are you okay? What's wrong? Dammit, I knew I shouldn't have let you go home by yourself tonight. Where are you? Is he home?"

"I live a block down from the BBC headquarters," I managed to push out. "Come now…quickly."

"I'll be there in a jiffy," Benedict said, about to hang up the phone when I stopped him.

"Stay with me, Ben," I said, tears pouring down my face. "I want to hear your voice…it will help."

I heard belongings crashing about through the phone when I finally heard Benedict say, "I'm right here, sweetie. Just keep on talking to me. I don't want to get there to find you dead."

"Don't be so morbid," I said, my lips cracking as I tried to smile. "I've still got some life left in me yet…just in a lot of pain."

We conversed for a few more moments before I heard a banging on the door, signifying that Benedict had finally arrived. I assumed he would only barged the door down but somehow, he had managed to let himself in without breaking anything.

I heard him rushing through the apartment, searching through every room before he found me on the floor of the bedroom, surrounded in its contents and flashes of my own blood.

Although I was the most thankful person in the world right then when Benedict picked me up in his arms and rested my head in the crook of his arm, I was distraught when I saw a disheveled Bianca standing at the door.