Fear Itself

When I awoke, only one of my eyes opened, and I found myself laying in a pitch dark room, on a bed. It was my room, judging by the faint shadow of frames hanging on the wall. My head pulsed and throbbed, but something cold was soon laid on my face. “Don’t sit up,” the raspy, quiet voice told me. Even in the darkness, I knew that was Avery. “An’ don’t talk too loud.”

“Shouldn’t be a problem for you,” I joked, and I thought I heard him chuckle a half-hearted sort of laugh, like he didn’t know what else to do. Sometimes, he did that when he was angry. He was so angry, he had to laugh or perhaps he would explode… kind of like Dean did. Speaking of Dean. “Where’s Muscles?”

“Ran off with Chandler. Don’t quite know where, but he ain’t comin’ ‘round you.”

“Why not?” I murmured, resting my left hand upon the ice pack. The cold made my head feel a little bit better.

“Don’t expect you to remember,” Avery grumbled. “But he slugged you good.”

“No, he didn’t,” I immediately protested, raising my voice a little, but it hurt my head even more, and my stomach began to churn. It was quiet for a moment. He did hit me, didn’t he? Of course, he did. Why else would I feel so ill and shaky? I certainly didn’t knock myself out. “What’s the damage, Mumbles?”

“Bruised left cheekbone. Left eye swelled shut. Cut on your nose.”

I swallowed back the nausea in my throat and closed my eyes. “He didn’t do it on purpose,” I insisted. He would never hit me on purpose. “He promised he’d never—”

“Don’t matter,” Avery told me. “Still did it. Still ain’t seein’ you.”

Just as I accepted defeat, knowing that arguing with Avery about anything was a pointless battle, a gentle knock sounded on the door. “Avery,” Dean spoke through the steel, just loud enough to hear him, but soft enough not to hurt my head. “I know I ran off a couple hours ago, I just—“

“No, Cassidy,” Avery snapped instantly. I didn’t like that very much. I wanted to see Dean, despite what had happened. I wanted to talk to him because somehow I didn’t feel like any of this was deliberate or purposeful. Certainly he could make everything better. He always did, but as long as Avery was around, that meant no Dean. No Dean just meant more pain.

“I need to talk to her,” Dean persisted. “I’m not going away until I do.”

The sound of incoherent grumbling sounded from Avery’s throat. A weight lifted from the end of the mattress where he’d sat, and the sound of shuffling boots drifted up from the floor. The panel slid open, revealing Avery’s silhouette in the frame. “You got five minutes, Cassidy.” Avery placed one of my books by the door’s motion sensor in the bottom corner. “An’ the door stays open.”

I caught a mere glimpse of Dean’s solemn expression before he and Avery traded places. Dean stepped into the shadows, and Avery moved to the table just feet away, watching in.

The sound of footsteps stopped when the springs of the mattress creaked, and the weight shifted again. He was far from me. The soft glow of light from the main room brought his figure into view. His back was hunched, head down like he couldn’t bear to look at me. If he did, all he would see was what he’d done: his own creation, the manifestation of all his anger and unbridled rage painted on my face.

Despite Avery’s instructions, I sat up. I shifted slowly, and I gradually came to lean against the wall and brought my legs up to my chest. I kept my distance even though all I wanted to do was reach and touch him, tell him everything was going to be fine, that we were fine. Were we fine? The slight elevation in my heartbeat at the sight of him told me otherwise. My shoulders shrank inward when I looked at his face, cast in shadow, focused on the floor.

Never once did I think I would feel fear in Dean’s presence. This was the way I felt around my father, not around Dean. Regardless, I wanted to cling to him and never let go. I just didn’t have it within me to reach for him, not yet. I needed to let him speak first.

“I didn’t see you,” he murmured, voice soft and low, lower than it had to be. His tone was heavy with guilt. His elbows brushed against his jeans. Avery stared in still: watching, waiting, just in case Dean snapped again. He was wrong; Dean wasn’t going to do that. He wasn’t some kind of monster. He made a mistake, and he was already paying dearly for it. From the looks of it, he had beat himself up enough over it already. Chandler probably had a go at him too. “I’m not… I’m not trying to excuse myself—“ Dean heaved a trembling sigh. “—But I was always really angry… even as a kid, and you know, I enlisted in the militia, and they had me on hormones and steroids, and…” He shook his head. “I get these black outs, sometimes. I should have told you, I just…”

Seeing him like this made my chest ache, like my heart was ready to burst open and shatter inside of me. I wanted him to look at me with his characteristic cheeky grin, as cocky as it was. I wanted his eyes to light up and glow when he saw me. That light wasn’t there anymore, at least not right now. He wouldn’t even look up.

Dean rubbed his right fist as though he could still feel his knuckles smashing against the ridges of my skull. “I wanted to kill my dad, and I didn’t see you,” he continued with a flat tone. The fear shook in his voice until he swallowed it back. When his fingers combed through his dark blonde hair, I wanted to grab his hand, wanted to squeeze it, and make him better. That was a simple solution. A stupid solution. But a nice thought.

I did so much for him: cleaned his house, did his paperwork while he napped, walked his dog when he went to work… but those things all seemed so trivial now. None of those things were going to make this okay. I couldn’t do the things I usually did to make his life easier, even just a little. I knew better than anyone how hard it really was for him, how he woke up with a smile on his face, against all odds, and continued about his day as though he didn’t have care in the world. He was the strongest man I knew, but I didn’t see that man right now.

I saw a frightened child finally trying to confront the monsters that had been living under his bed, but he was failing. He was failing, and he had never failed before. He didn’t know what to do. Dean was lost. It hung heavy in his eyes. The weight of the world was slowly sinking down on his shoulders, and I wanted nothing more than to lift it, to help him carry it. If I didn’t, it would break him, but to take it all away would break me to. I didn’t know how to help. My heart was aching.

Even still, Dean promised he would never hurt me. How ironic life could be. Sometimes, it just whirled around and punched you in the gut or, in my case, the face.

“I shouldn’t have gotten in the way,” I interjected with a whisper. His head finally twisted around, and his blue eyes glowed in the light. I wanted to laugh, I was so excited to see just his eyes, but even smiling made my head throb. Sometimes, when he was happy, his eyes lit up like fireworks. I loved that about his eyes the most, I think.

“Blondie, no,” Dean protested softly, shaking his head like he couldn’t believe what he had heard, like he couldn’t even fathom the words coming out of my mouth. “That’s not your fault.” He began to glance away, but I didn’t want him to. I reached my hand out just an inch before realizing it was too dark and I was too dizzy. The room began to spin again, so I leaned my head against the cold steel of the wall, letting it soothe my headache. “What I did, how I acted…” He stopped, closed his eyes, and sighed. I could almost hear his breath sinking to the floor. “That wasn’t normal.”

Sure, it wasn’t normal, but what was normal in this world? Not a thing about London was how I had imagined it, but that didn’t matter. I got over it, even grew to love some of it. Even what I didn’t grow to love, I accepted and sought to improve it, and if I couldn’t improve it, I moved on. What else could I do? We move on, and we adapt. It was really that simple. Dean taught me that. He should have known that better than anyone else, but something about his low gaze and the way he chewed his bottom lip told me that he didn’t see a way out of this. He didn’t think it was fixable, not this time.

To him, this seemed about as repairable as a shattered vase: a prized possession accidentally knocked off the pedestal that ultimately ended up in a million little pieces and shards, none of which absolutely fit together in just the right way and seemed like an unsolvable puzzle. It only took seconds for things to go sour, and right before his eyes, the glass spilled across the floor, and there wasn’t a single thing he could do about it. Even if he tried to fix it for hours, he knew it would never be the same. There were be cracks and ugly sears and glue seeping from the crevices. It would never be the same masterpiece, the same beautiful work of art that people once stared and marveled at. It was just a constant reminder that this was all his fault, that he was the reason only one of my eyes opened and my left cheek was marred with black and blue splotches.

I disagreed. Fighting the emptiness in my stomach, I inched forward in the darkness, crawling across the stiff mattress until I could wriggle under his arm. Dean shifted, startled. Even his voice rang with confusion. “Blondie, what are you doing?” he asked as I nestled against his chest, searching for a familiar warmth and comfort I used to find in his arms.

“Hold me,” I murmured, glancing up to him until my head ached and forced me to close my eyes. “Please.”

Slowly and gently, Dean’s arms slipped around me. His fingers trembled at first, and his grip was loose. It was only a moment before his grip tightened, and I smiled in the comfortable compression. I was safe, and warm, and it all hit me at once. Sobs escaped my throat, quiet at first but gradually growing loud, until my head throbbed, but I couldn’t stop it; it had been building for too long now.

One of his hands laid over mine, holding the ice pack to my face but also holding my head to his chest as he wrapped around me like a blanket. I felt his forehead press against my hair, and he began to shiver. His heart was beating out of time. Sorrow pulsed in his fingertips.

His breathing sputtered with soft, uneven breaths, and I could feel the tremors in his body continuing, felt him squeeze me as tiny sounds escaped his mouth. I wasn’t sure if it was because he was happy or because he was sad, but I knew I didn’t like that sound coming from him. I wriggled my hand out from under his and placed mine on top now, placing my fingers between his and squeezing tightly, but that only made it worse. The sounds were just a little louder now, and his chest shook harder.

Footsteps approached from the distance but didn’t enter the room. I heard the spine of a book brush against the floor just before a rush of air released from the wall, and the door slid shut, leaving us alone.