Broken- And Fixed Again- (A Jamilton Fanfic)

Chapter 13: A Flightless Bird

//TW: manipulation, abuse, swearing, memories of attempted suicide\|

James

Every morning is the same.

I wake, the boy I'd sacrifice entire worlds for laying in bed besides me, mine in every sense of the word. He is love, he is safety, he is warmth. He is the song I have always heard only faintly in the background, but the moment he returned into my life, into my arms, it as if that song has exploded to life, unafraid to make its melody heard. I have won.  I have everything I have ever wanted and I have it guaranteed, a promise he willingly made that will forever bind our fates together even after we are long gone from this miserable world.

I have Thomas, the only thing I have ever wanted, and everything else that encompasses, and yet, I still feel so cold.

It's an unending nightmare, this cold plague that has so completely swept over my body and soul, digging its frozen claws far past my skin and deep into my heart. It follows me everywhere, that intolerable humming in the back of my mind, forever reminding me of its damnable presence as it whispers and whispers and promises me that it will never let me be. I cannot exist without its dreadful tune, interfering with Thomas's gorgeous song.

There must be something wrong with me, to ever let myself fall victim to that deplorable tone, only worsened by those memories of that night, of that sudden and terrible bolt of fear that cleaved through my chest. I still shudder as I think about it, the subject of my dreams for too long and for no discernible reason.

God, I had never been so terrified as I did that night, forced to watch as Thomas laid there, gasping for breath. My body had frozen and I had hesitated and I had watched him struggle to hold onto his last breaths, the knife laying lifeless but satisfied at his side. He had been smiling, his mouth moving in what I had thought been a silent prayer. But that doesn't make sense, for Thomas has never believed in that kind of stuff, preferring to walk his own path and carve his own fate. But now, looking back on it, I wonder how I could have possibly missed the song he sang for himself, the hushed lullaby he offered the world in sweet farewell as he drew his last few breaths.

That one word rings through my ears, hardly a yell, hardly anything more than a whisper that has given up all hope.

H-help?

And I had come.

And horror fills me as that small, insignificant part of my brain wonders what could have happened if I had not been there. What I could have seen if I had returned home only a few minutes later, if I had not responded to that call.

I forced the thought from my mind, and my breathing should have come easier, but it did not. There was nothing in my head but that image of a lifeless shell of the boy I'd given so much up for already. There was nothing but that pressing fear that has so easily carved a home for itself in the very core of my being, a newly realized terror at how empty my life would be should Thomas leave it. How could he ever think to do that to me?

"Relax, James," I whispered to myself as I hurried through the streets, my hands shaking as I tried not to let my mind wander too far. Especially with the knowledge that Thomas was currently by himself right now, subject to whatever whims and fantasies would rise from the depths. That's the thing about Thomas. He doesn't think before he makes a decision. He is so quick to fly away just as things get hard, like a bird seeking a refuge that does not exist. He always searches for the quickest route out of the self-imposed darkness, no matter what it takes.

He is a bird, but a flightless bird. And when he comes crashing down to the cold, cruel earth, who will be there but me to offer him his last sense of safety, his last chance for a home?