Broken- And Fixed Again- (A Jamilton Fanfic)

Chapter 22: Colors

//TW: mentions of self-harm and suicide\\

:)

Thomas

A scream floated through the air, and as the waking world slammed into me again with all of its weight, all of its force, something escaped me. Some distant memory, some forgotten feeling I was sure I'd never know again. It danced right through my grasp, and I was left to stare up at the ceiling as the tingling paralyzation of the fleeting nightmare sunk heavy in my limbs. Waves of water rushed down my throat, drowning out all sense, all hope, and bringing me to the startling realization that somehow, someway, I was drowning. Falling. Dying.

I laid there, trapped underneath the weight of a thousand ghosts screaming their semi-coherent preachings, the fading echoes of my own scream still ringing through my ears. And there was nothing I could do, nothing I could say, but stare up at the blank empty ceiling and allow my mind to distort shapes and conjure up figures out of the emptiness. My heart beat so loud I could hear its pulsing in my throat.

My wrists itched. They burned. They hurt. They hurt so bad and there was no remedy for this kind of pain. It was the kind of pain you dealt with quietly, mostly because what other option did you have? There was nothing at all but the differing shades of gray and black my world had been plunged into, and the monsters that crept out of the crevices they created, borne from the absence of light.

Flashes of the nightmare blurred by in a stream of consciousness that hardly made any sense. They weren't images. They were colors. They were feelings. They were the most intrinsic part of what it means to be a human combined with the overarching fear powered solely by instinct and long-lasting memories carved into our minds. My mind.

The world around me was gray and black, but my mind was colored in hues of a deep, violent red, a red that could only be caused by smoke and flames and embers. A red only caused by chaos and utter destruction, followed by the prolonged, absolute nothingness.

Eventually, after what felt like both hours and milliseconds, the sensations that could only be described as physical static left my body. I gripped myself with a newfound control and forced myself to breathe, to decontextualize, to break everything apart and see the room in the much simpler terms I could understand.

I sat up in bed and waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness just to the point where I could make out the barest forms of shapes. My dresser, my bookshelf, my plants. I drew in the smell of the room, pulling apart the flowery and earthy scents, and my breathing came much easier than before. It was the closest thing to a garden I'll ever have and it's almost enough for me.

In.

Out.

It was all I could do. It was all I wanted to do. Because the only person I needed, the only person whose touch I craved and desired and depended upon for my utter survival, was gone. He had fled like the glow of stars in the daylight, and it didn't help that I essentially had been the one to question their glow in the first place. You wouldn't think they could disappear so resolutely, but they did, overshadowed by the bright and overbearing sun.

The sight of him and John holding each other physically hurt but I'd get through it because what other choice did I have? Unless I wanted to go back to a place where darkness crept around every corner and pain waited with its ivory claws eager to sink into vulnerable skin, I had nowhere to go. I had no other sanctuary, no other home. Every bridge had been burned and I was left stranded on an empty island.

But my home was not this apartment; my home was Alexander. Alexander and his constantly-reassuring smile. And as long as he was happy, what else mattered? It didn't matter how I felt. It didn't matter what I wanted. I had been the center of a story that didn't involve me for far too long, and to what end? It was time to put an end to my misery, my self-pity, and my jealousy once and for all. It was time to let go of a boy who did not need me the same way I needed him.