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The thing about having your heart broken – or, not so much broken as brutally crushed – is that it feels like drowning. Not a sudden sort of drowning, like being plunged into the deep water all at once, though. More of a slow tide of disbelieving horror rolling in, trying to deny that it's happening, but still eventually finding yourself rooted to the spot as the waters rise above your head.
And you think that you can say something, do something, to stop it. You try and bargain and rationalize it away – like surely you must have more control than this in your own life, in the things that, at one time, used to matter and make it make sense. But they don't, not any more, no matter how hard you kick against the riptide of anguish.
And as the tide washes over you, your chest gets tighter, and breathing gets harder. You feel like you can barely claw in a breath for the knot in your throat; like the weight of a whole fucking ship has come to rest on your ribcage, and your lungs simply won't expand. The tears come, and so does a high, wailing keen, because no matter how much you want to send up a full-throated, roaring scream of indignation, your chest is too tight for that. And so you wheeze out a long, high wail and gasp for breath and gasp for air, AIR, why is there no fucking air?
Eventually you curl into yourself and shudder. It's too late, really, to protect the vital organs with this fetal curl; your heart has already been eviscerated, your soul disemboweled, and you are slowly bleeding out from your wounds. But somehow you don't die, and the world moves around you, and you wonder how it can possibly be that life manages to struggle on. How you can possibly continue to exist when you feel like there is constantly a fist knotted around your throat and lungs. How your body can still want the things that allow it to continue existing, when clearly you would rather just lay here and die. Your body wants to live, but your mind and heart have crawled into a grave and begun to drag the dirt over you, convinced that you are essentially a corpse. A corpse that still somehow feels the incessant brutal loss like a phantom limb – it hurts, it hurts, it agonizingly aches, and yet it isn't even there.
How is it that he isn't there?
Why don't you get a say in this, why doesn't it matter to him how much this has shattered you? You are nothing but shards of glass, ground down by the wheels of time and blown away in the wind. You don't fucking matter, none of this could ever have possibly fucking mattered. Not to him. Not how you wanted to. Because nothing ever turns out how you want it to, and why should he care? Why should this be any different than any of the thousands of fucking things that you've wanted and prayed for and never fucking gotten?
Why should this beautiful thing, this stained-glass treasure that you got close enough to touch, close enough to hold in your hands for a moment... why were you fucking stupid enough to think that it could ever be yours? FUCK. You feel so fucking stupid, the biggest fucking fool who's ever lived. Fucking hate yourself.
Because it's your own fault, isn't it? Your own fault for wanting. Your own fault for caring. But you did – you craved this with every ounce of your soul, pleaded to just be allowed to have this one beautiful thing . Please – let me have this. Let it be mine, for once.
And maybe if you could let go of that wanting, you could be free of this, but you can't you can't you can't oh fucking god it hurts it fucking hurts, please just make it stop hurting but you still want it. And so it aches and the wound bleeds and festers and you would give anything for him to take it back, to take you back, to be yours and to give a shit and to hold you tenderly together and tell you that he didn't mean it. That you didn't deserve to be hurt like that, god, why the fuck did he hurt you like that, like you meant less than nothing to him all along?
Eventually you move from the pile on the floor that you've become. Your stupid stubborn body doesn't stop needing things, and you have run out of tears, so you shuffle to the bathroom and piss and splash your face. You choke down a glass of water that you can barely swallow around the lump in your throat. You wonder if the lump is made out of all the snot that you swallowed while you sobbed; or perhaps it's your heart and lungs attempting to abandon this fucking sinking ship that you've become. You think maybe you'd be better off without them, stupid fucking heart. Less problems if you didn't have one to begin with, maybe... and you choke out a bitter, hiccuping laugh. Because honestly, who would have thought that you had a heart to begin with?
People around you think that, since you are still walking around, that you are really still alive, even though you know yourself to be an empty, shuffling corpse. Except that you're not, are you? It takes being alive to feel this kind of pain. To remember each and every morning that everything good that you once had has gone and fucked off, leaving you bitter and alone.
The crying doesn't go away, really. It just takes breaks. It sneaks up on you when you aren't expecting it – when some stupid little thing reminds you of what you've lost, and suddenly your throat shuts down again and the tears flow and you find yourself useless once again for god knows how long at a stretch.
This is how you know you've drowned, see – that inability to breathe, the incessant flow of water from your eyes, implacable. Except when you've cried too long, and there is nothing left but the dry scratch of your eyelids when you drag the heel of your hand across them.
You try drinking the pain away, but you can't fucking escape the ghost of him. The fucking way that the initial stages of being drunk make you want to reach out and cling to whoever's at hand, at first, only realizing too late that there's no one there to cling to. And then it makes you want to fight, to smash your fists into the walls and let out the scream that's been building, trapped inside you. The scream that feels like rage – at the futility of it all, the injustice of it, at your own inability to fucking FIX this broken thing.
You can't remember, when drunk, if you're the broken thing, or if he is. Or if, somehow, you both are.
And the worst part about that is that you know – you fucking know down to your guts that, despite this agony, this rage, despite it all? If he was in front of you, you would fall to your knees and cling to his legs like a child and beg him to take you back. Because fuck your pride; you'd give it up in a heartbeat to make this fucking pain go away. It wouldn't matter that it was all his fault. It wouldn't matter that he's made you feel like less than nothing. Because he's the only one who can put you back together, you just know it to your core.
And it really wouldn't fucking matter to you whether you felt like shit about it, after. God, some tiny, rational voice in your head knows that, if he took you back, it would take a fucking tectonic shift of the world for you to feel safe, even then. Because, now that it's happened once, you would never stop wondering – what if he took it all away again?
So you lash out at everyone around you, and you live in this grave of self-loathing. This pit that you keep digging, further and further down into your own personal hell.
It doesn't fucking help to lash out, to rage, to hurt others. But you can't seem to help yourself because every fucking hour something brushes against the raw wound that you've become and you convulse in agony. It's only fair that everyone else gets a taste of it, too. Feels what you feel.
You see people laughing together and you fucking seethe . Because there is nothing good or funny about this infernal cesspool that you live in. Never mind that you used to laugh along with them every day. You don't fucking laugh now, is the point, so why the fuck should they?
You see the gentle touches and soft eye contact between couples and you simultaneously want to scream and to sneer and to throw one of them overboard, just so that someone else will know how it fucking feels . The sooner they realize that love isn't fucking real, the better. It was always going to end this way, sooner or later. Someone always fucking leaves first.
So you maim and shatter those around you until each and every one of you are nothing but scarred and broken things whose trust has been pulverized. Anyone who is left is just so much broken glass, and the stabbing shards of you grind against one another, chipping away more and more pieces of whatever remains.
And one day you find yourself aware that maybe, just maybe, you can smile. But it feels like sacrilege, doesn't it? Anything that may have once brought you joy is bullshit. Where the fuck did that feeling come from, and who fucking told it that you ever again deserved any fucking trace of it?
You can't seem to kill it though. Couldn't fucking give enough of a shit to kill yourself, so here you are, struggling along, and some fragile tendril of life is fucking blooming in the wreckage.
And then you hear about him, and it all comes crashing down around you once again.
You're sat at a bar, pretending like you're capable of functioning in public again. The broken remnants of your friends, those you couldn't drive away, surround you. Their voices wash over you like water as you drink, and it doesn't make the bile rise in your stomach anymore to hear them laugh. There's no way you'd join in, but it might be alright for a little while to be around them. Sometimes you're paying attention to the words, but other times you're drifting on the tides of your thoughts, watching the crowd. Feeling memories rise and fall and marveling at the fact that they no longer feel like one long, drawn out death sentence.
And then you hear his name, and it all comes rushing back up your throat like acid. You want to run, want to throw your fucking beer bottle to the ground at their feet and watch it shatter, but you're paralyzed by this old fucking need to hyperfocus in on anything to do with him. Because maybe this stranger knows if he's as broken and useless as he made you, months ago. You can't quite decide, anymore, if you want him to be broken and useless. Would it hurt less or more, you wonder, to know that he wasn't okay?
You don't have to wonder for long.
Because he's fucking dead.
The rumors are swirling at the table next to you, and your brain is swirling too, faster and faster like a maelstrom in a fucking hurricane, and you slump and stagger and gasp for air. It's like a fucking bullet to the gut and you can't you can't you can't you don't even know what you can't because everything about existing is impossible except this god-forsaken swirl of thought that you can't escape and you can'tyoucan'tyoucan'tyou JUST FUCKING CAN'T EXIST JESUS CHRIST and the world whites out around you –
This time it doesn't feel like drowning.
This time you are simply paralyzed and your eyes are staring and where the FUCK are all of those goddamn tears that you had so fucking many of before?
The evening fades into morning, and you can't move.
Sometimes you are too exhausted to be awake, and so you aren't.
Sometimes the pain is too much to let you sleep, and so you don't.
You still can't fucking breathe. You wish for numbness. You wish for unconsciousness. You wish your fucking body would just give up the ghost and realize that you're dead already. No need to keep breathing.
Your heart can stop beating any time now. Not like you fucking need it anymore.
But it doesn't stop, and you watch the daylight fade down the walls until it's night again, and you feel like you're made of stone there in the dark. And there is nothing but you and your grief. No one exists, because you are made of stone and he is dead.
And once again you sleep.
There is light in your room, and you are dead or dreaming. There is no other explanation for this.
He is dead, after all. And that can't possibly be his voice.
And maybe it is a dream, or a memory that is surfacing, because he is arguing with someone on deck, and of course he is arguing with Izzy. It almost makes you want to smile, but you're still frozen, and your chest is tight all over again.
There are footsteps approaching the door, and even a knock, but you are made of stone. Even if this was real, you couldn't move, couldn't answer. And that voice calls out your name, softly, but you still can't do a fucking thing. A dream, that's all this is. Nothing but a fucking night terror, probably, because you are frozen and the weight on your chest is crushing you. A night terror where you have to bear witness to that fucking face leaving you again is the worst thing you can possibly imagine; and you would know, because it would hardly be the first time it had happened.
So when the door starts to creak open, you screw your eyes shut and pray to wake up. Unconsciousness is better than waking pain, but you can't bear this. Not again.
You don't wake up, and the familiar dull thrum of pain in your knee from all this stillness makes you think that maybe – just maybe – you might already be awake.
A floorboard creaks and he says your name again, like a prayer.
You open your eyes. May as well see him one last time, here in your hallucinating mind.
The morning sun from the open door streams in and sparks in his hair. You wonder if your memory of him is fading, like his scent from a too-often borrowed robe – because this is not how he looks. No more silks and brocades and fine linens, but simple light cottons. You mourn that thought, because you needed that memory to cling to, since you could no longer cling to him. The tears finally come again at that, and you turn your head away and into the mattress and you allow yourself to sob. No one to hear or see it but this phantom, after all.
But his hand on your shoulder and the dip of the bed scream in your ears that this is real, so real, so bloody real that you can smell the lavender-and-salt scent of him, feel that gentle touch on the side of your jaw as he eases your face out of the linens.
“Oh, Ed,” he murmurs, and he pulls your head into his lap. And the little voice whispering that maybe this is real – maybe you can trust it? – because he is warm and solid and smells like himself in a way that this bed hasn't for months. And you can't help but turn and haul the upper half of your body across his legs so that you can cling to his waist and sob into his shirt and it fucking serves him right if you use it as a handkerchief, anyway.
He croons apologies and bits of sweet nonsense and the knot inside your chest unwinds a bit. You're no longer frozen, you know, but probably there is room to be angry later... later. Not now. Not when you just got him back from the dead and he is saying every little thing that you needed to hear. Not when he is cradling the shards of you in his arms and fitting them back together into something resembling a person.
Your muscles unclench, except for the ones that you're using to hold him close, and eventually the tears fade away, everything fades away except the knowledge of him , and, much more serenely this time, you sleep.
There's an ache in your chest and you can see the orange of afternoon light slanting in before you even open your eyes, and you want desperately to cling to sleep for a little while longer. There is a nagging thought that you can't grasp fluttering in your mind, the feeling of a dream that you can't quite hang onto but desperately crave to keep.
Stede.
Your eyes fly open and you exhale in relief because he is still here. Still holding you like a fragile thing in his lap, his head leaning against the wall and a delicate snore issuing forth from his lips.
And once you fixate on his lips, they are the only thing you can think about. You couldn't lay here any longer, anyway, your bladder tells you that much, and so you shift to get your arm beneath you; and, when you move, he starts awake. His open eyes soften immediately under your gaze, and you see no reason to further resist the urge to bring your lips to his.
He is startled, at first, by the suddenness of your movement, but then your arms are around each other and your lips are fitted against his and you cradle his jaw in the palm of your hand. He twines his fingers through your hair like he doesn't even mind how sweat-streaked it is, god, you must smell dreadful, but he is here he is kissing you and you can't bring yourself to care about anything else.
Well, maybe one thing, your bladder reminds you; and so you pull away. “You came back,” you whisper, awestruck, tracing the contours of his face with reverent fingers.
“I rather wish I never left,” he murmurs. His hand comes up to cradle yours.
“Me too,” you admit, and the tears prick your eyes again – always with the fucking tears, man, Jesus Christ. “Don't you dare go anywhere. Ever again.”