She doesn't know how long it lasts. Maybe at first because she keeps volleying wildly between the same circuit of reactions and the part of her head whisper-shouting she needs to be ready not to fall apart when he pulls away the next second, too. Except that second passes. And the next. And the one after that. And everything spins. And the seconds keep passing. And neither of them let go.
And eventually her shoulders release some of their tension warily, and eventually her grip does a little, too. Not enough to be lax. Even when she does she shifts her hands to make sure the tips of her fingers are still securely curled around and against the back of his hand still. She's not letting go. She needs him not to. Not yet.
But maybe she's finding more ways to figure out how to breathe. Which slowly lets more and more in, as she keeps breathing, and Bill's music keeps playing, and Luther holds on to her, and lets her hold on him. Makes her feel even less like she's absolutely alone, and that every bit of her steel will belief that this has to get better, they have to fix it, might not be a desperate lie she's telling herself, and them, and this world to keep herself from going crazy.
It's a risk when she decides it -- all of it, every single part of it -- and it is a decision. Every single part of it. She types up the words in front of her eyes, words she's never said to a single soul, then, or in the last year, and then tipped carefully across the space left to lean her head against Luther's arm and shoulder, while pressing send.
When Claire was first born, and they put her in my arms, I remember thinking I'd never seen anything so small. So helpless. So perfect. I remember thinking that if she needed me to, I would die, right at that moment, without a whisper even. Like that poem, with the closing flower. Or that if any of them ever meant her any harm, I would kill everyone in the whole building. That simple. That complete. Just to keep her safe. To do whatever she needed most.
I don't know when...how I forgot that.
Words she could never say to her therapist if she had remembered them last year. Words she never could have said to Patrick when it happened without sounding ruthlessly insane. But it'd all made sense, with all of her, who she'd been and what she could do, and how important Claire had become, how much everything had shifted in the space of that first second. How much it could never change back.
How much she didn't know who she was just as much without Claire now, and with what she'd done to Claire; just the same way she hadn't known who she was, wasn't who she used to be when she didn't have Luther anymore at nineteen. But even with him back, even with whatever this was or might be, she knew it wasn't like swapping tiles, and she couldn't be whole with Luther back at the price of Claire. Maybe not without both of them ever again.
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And eventually her shoulders release some of their tension warily, and eventually her grip does a little, too. Not enough to be lax. Even when she does she shifts her hands to make sure the tips of her fingers are still securely curled around and against the back of his hand still. She's not letting go. She needs him not to. Not yet.
But maybe she's finding more ways to figure out how to breathe. Which slowly lets more and more in, as she keeps breathing, and Bill's music keeps playing, and Luther holds on to her, and lets her hold on him. Makes her feel even less like she's absolutely alone, and that every bit of her steel will belief that this has to get better, they have to fix it, might not be a desperate lie she's telling herself, and them, and this world to keep herself from going crazy.
It's a risk when she decides it -- all of it, every single part of it -- and it is a decision. Every single part of it. She types up the words in front of her eyes, words she's never said to a single soul, then, or in the last year, and then tipped carefully across the space left to lean her head against Luther's arm and shoulder, while pressing send.
When Claire was first born, and they put her in my arms, I remember thinking I'd never seen anything so small. So helpless. So perfect. I remember thinking that if she needed me to, I would die, right at that moment, without a whisper even. Like that poem, with the closing flower. Or that if any of them ever meant her any harm, I would kill everyone in the whole building. That simple. That complete. Just to keep her safe. To do whatever she needed most.
I don't know when...how I forgot that.
Words she could never say to her therapist if she had remembered them last year. Words she never could have said to Patrick when it happened without sounding ruthlessly insane. But it'd all made sense, with all of her, who she'd been and what she could do, and how important Claire had become, how much everything had shifted in the space of that first second. How much it could never change back.
How much she didn't know who she was just as much without Claire now, and with what she'd done to Claire; just the same way she hadn't known who she was, wasn't who she used to be when she didn't have Luther anymore at nineteen. But even with him back, even with whatever this was or might be, she knew it wasn't like swapping tiles, and she couldn't be whole with Luther back at the price of Claire. Maybe not without both of them ever again.