Hold Your Breath

Plagued by a memory that can never be escaped, and the love that transcends the Hell Earth has become in this time.

She wakes up screaming again. It was the same dream, the same nightmare that’s woken her every time she finally slips off to sleep since that night nearly two years ago. That night the world fell, burning, to crush beneath it everyone she’d ever cared about. That night the darkness crept across the sky to swallow the sun, and make an entire continent, and entire civilization, a hell on earth.

That night that she failed, and had to hold her only family as they breathed their last breath.

So technically, it wasn’t a dream, it wasn’t a nightmare. It was a memory. That fact just made it worse as the horrific images flashed across her mind.

She clasped her head in her hands, trying to drive out the memory, trying not to see as her brothers, her sister, her mentor, her friends, and then her lover died. She couldn’t forget the moment his dancing hazel eyes had lost their luster, their life, and glassed over. The same moment his heart had stopped, having run out of blood to pump to keep him alive.

She’d pushed the pale curls from his white face, trying to talk him into staying alive until hands had pulled her away. She could feel it, even now, the hands on her arms, pulling her away from him, from Jack, away from the darkness that was killing everyone else.

She could hear her name being called insistently, just the same as it had been that night. "Danica! Danica! Look at me!" The voice sounded more real than most of her memories, and as her hands were pulled, gently but firmly, from her face, she realized this wasn’t the memory.

There was a familiar face before her. Hazel eyes that held a genuine love of life, a strong nose that was just a tad too wide, above lips that were full for a man, all topped with pale hair which tended to curl. It was the face of the man she had just seen die in her nightmare, but this face was real.

She knew because she put a trembling hand up to touch his cheek, that same face she had kept in her mind, in her heart, for all of five years now. She gasped when she felt the comforting solidness of a real face, instead of the memory she’d prayed she wasn’t still seeing.

He pulled her into his arms, holding her tightly as she buried her tear-stained face in his shoulder, gratefully wrapping her arms around him. "Oh, Jack," she moaned tiredly. "I had a nightmare. You were... dead."

He rubbed her back until her sheer exhaustion caused her to fall asleep again. He hoped she would sleep soundly this time, but it was unlikely. Nearly every time she slept, she woke screaming, crying as she saw Jack die again and again. And every single time it had happened, he had been there to help her out of it, to hold her until she slipped back into slumber. Every single time, she called him Jack, the man she had loved right up until he had died in her arms. Even though Jack had been gone for just about two full years, and the man holding her still had been her only companion for every day of those two years, she still called this man Jack every time she slept. He was used to being called his brother’s name after all this time, but it still hurt him that she loved a man long dead. It had hurt him that she loved Jack even when he was alive, for this man had loved her since the first moment he’d seen her.

And she’d belonged to Jack for just as long. And probably always would.

Reviews

[kruser23]

Thanks for the comment on my piece,...i thought id read some more of yours since you were kind enough to read me, and wow,...this actually gave me shivers. Nicely done.