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Breathe in, breathe out.
Don’t turn around and look at the campfire. Staring at it too long is what started all of this to begin with.
Don’t think about the heat that you can still feel on your back.
Ignore the pain in your shoulder. It’s not real.
It’s not real.
The screams in the back of your head aren’t real. The flames that you see when you close your eyes aren’t real.
Ignore it, ignore it, keep breathing and it’ll go away.
“Kamaria? You alright?”
Bruno’s hand lands on her shoulder, and the pain erupts. Kamaria is thrown straight back into the past. The fire is everywhere, blindingly bright against the night sky, the heat making it impossible to face. Ash falls from the sky like snow. A roof crumbles, and sparks explode across the dry grass nearby, igniting even more small fires that quickly join the inferno.
And all the while her shoulder burns, burns, burns.
“Kamaria!”
The sound cuts through the nightmare. With a desperate gulp of air, the clearing comes back into focus, Bruno’s worried face hovering close by. She’d flung herself away from him, apparently, and is propped on her elbows in the dried leaves.
She can still see the campfire over his shoulder.
“You’re alright,” he murmurs. His voice fades in and out, blending with the screams still in her mind before coming into focus again. “You’re right here with me. May I touch you?”
His hand stretches out, slowly. Her eyes dart to it, and she slaps him away, scooting herself further back. “No! Don’t touch it.” It burns. It won’t stop burning.
“Okay.” He settles down onto the ground, legs crossed and hands clasped in his lap. “I won’t.”
For a moment he sits silently, watching her. Thankfully, his head is blocking the fire from view now, and Kamaria rubs at her eyes harshly, trying to get back to forcing herself to breathe and calm down.
“What is it?” he asks quietly. “What do you not want me to touch?”
Shaking her head, Kamaria clutches her arm with the opposite hand, fingernails digging into her skin. She squeezes her eyes shut, then instantly opens them again when flames dance in the darkness of her vision.
“Hurts,” she whispers. The admission makes her feel even more like a small child.
Pathetic. Weak.
Bruno tips his head to the side, concern creasing his features. “May I see?”
She shakes her head again. As much as it feels like it’s brand new, like it’s happening all over again, logically she knows that it’s all in her head. There’s nothing he needs to see. She doesn’t want him to see, doesn’t want him to know how pathetic she actually is.
“Okay.” He doesn’t push, doesn’t demand. Never has. It’s one of the many things that made her grow to care about him so much. And the fact that he continues to sit there, quietly supportive even though he has no idea what’s going on, is another.
The memories are beginning to fade, her present surroundings staying more and more in focus, but her shoulder hasn’t let up its burning at all. She lets her head fall back, gritting her teeth and sucking in shaky breaths as she stares up at the bright blue sky.
“What can I do to help? Will you…let me hold your hand?”
She hesitates for a moment, then silently slides her hand out. A second later his large, warm fingers interlock with hers. Her breath hitches slightly, then evens out as she lets herself relax, lets the contact ground her further.
The touching thing is still so new. Before their captivity, she never let him touch her at all, not even a hand on her arm. She was too busy hating him, too afraid that he would hurt her, that he would turn out to be like every other man she’d ever met. But over the past months since they escaped, she’s slowly been getting more comfortable with these small, caring gestures. To start with, her skin would crawl and itch so much that she could barely stand it, and there are still times when she can’t handle it at all.
But other times, like this, it’s…nice. She trusts him now, knows that he would never purposely hurt her. Recently, she’s even let him kiss her. Granted, she almost lost it the first time, even though it was just on the cheek and she’d given him permission, but that didn’t stop her from telling him another time he could do it again. She’s trying. She’s really, really trying, because…she cares for him. She wants to be able to be normal, to have a healthy relationship with him, more than anything else. Some days it seems impossible, but she isn’t going to quit trying.
“Does it still hurt?”
She nods slightly, face still craned toward the sky. It’s highly likely that it won’t stop hurting for days, though hopefully not quite this badly.
“Can you at least tell me what is hurting?”
He’s worried that she’s injured. Now that some of the gripping fear has passed, she can understand that. She still doesn’t really want him to know, but she owes him at least some sort of explanation.
“Shoulder.” She swallows, and tries to loosen her grip on her arm a little. “It’s, um…it’s nothing to worry about, though.”
“You’re in pain, Kamaria. Of course I’m going to worry about you.”
A slight smile twitches at her lips at how much he genuinely cares. “I just mean it’s…it’s not an actual injury. Not a new one, at least.”
“Oh.”
The way he says it makes it sounds like he suddenly understands, drawing Kamaria’s gaze finally to his face. He looks like he understands, too, and…maybe he does. She’s seen him get lost in his memories before, and she knows a lot of it tends to center around an old injury on his chest. If anyone could understand what she’s feeling right now, it’s probably Bruno. That realization simultaneously brings a warmth beneath her ribs and twists in her gut.
He smiles sympathetically at her. “Will you…please let me see? If not, that’s alright. I won’t ask again.”
She knows, intellectually, that she can trust him with this. That doesn’t make it any easier to give in. But she takes a deep breath, thinks it through, and slowly nods. It takes one more deep breath to give her the courage to actually turn around, tugging her blouse down a bit and pulling her hair over the opposite shoulder.
She’s only seen it a couple of times, but she still remembers it well. The darkness of the scar has faded some over the years, and the area stretched as she grew, but the skin is still puckered and warped, about the size of her fist. She can feel Bruno’s breath ghost over it as he leans in to look.
“It was summer.” The words spill from her lips without her consciously deciding to say them. She could stop now, she doesn’t have to keep going, but she knows that he’ll listen and understand and the story seems to be bubbling up inside of her. “The middle of the night. We were all in bed, there was…there was no indication that anything was wrong.
“I woke up to…chaos. The smell of smoke. It was so bright outside, I could see it through the window and the cracks around the door. There were…” Her fingernails press back into her arm. “There were people screaming. Mera told me to stay, she went out to see what was going on, and…” Her breath shudders as it enters her lungs. “That was the last time I ever saw her.”
Bruno’s hand finds hers again, squeezing it gently, but he doesn’t say anything, allowing her to continue.
“I stayed, like she told me. As long as I could. The house started filling with smoke, I couldn’t breathe. But I stayed. And then…there was fire. The, the ceiling, and one of the walls…I knew I had to get out of there. But the roof collapsed before I could get to the door, it…it fell down all around me and on me. Little burning pieces, all over my skin and clothes and hair. And my dress…it caught on fire, right…” Letting go of her arm for a second, she gestures at the scar. “I got out, and I…I managed to put it out, but…”
There are so many ways that she could finish that sentence. But the entirety of my village was on fire, soldiers were slaughtering my people outside my door, the women were being attacked and I still don’t know to this day how exactly Mera died, only that she was gone.
She can’t say any of that right now, though. The words have dried up, sticking in her throat, and all she can do is curl in on herself, fighting to get her breathing back under control.
Another time, maybe. She’ll try to tell him the rest someday.
“I’m so sorry, Kamaria.” He squeezes her hand again, helping pull her back to the present. “What happened to you and your people…was horrendous, and never should have happened.”
There’s nothing she can say to that, but she does appreciate it, so she just squeezes back. Bruno scoots a little closer to her.
“Your scar…may I?”
She catches his gaze out of the corner of her eye, nodding after only a short hesitation. She doesn’t know what exactly he’s asking, but she trusts him.
He leans forward and softly brushes his lips against her shoulder. Kamaria inhales sharply, surprised, but not at all upset. In fact, the kiss seems to cool her skin. Her grip on her arm loosens considerably as the burning grows more bearable.
“I wish I could have stopped them,” he whispers, head bowed. “I couldn’t be there for you then, and I can’t make it better now. But I’m here for you, Kamaria. If there’s anything I can do to help, please ask me.”
The corners of her mouth turn up ever so slightly, and she leans over until her temple is resting on his forehead. “You already have.” In so many ways that she can’t even begin to explain at this moment. “Thank you.”