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Thump .
He could see it replaying behind his eyelids, in his mind’s eye even when his eyes were open.
Thump .
It had felt so easy, taking that man’s head in his hands.
Thump.
Slamming it against the pillar behind him.
Thump.
Again.
Thump.
And again.
Thump.
And again.
Thump .
He’d deserved it, hadn’t he? For taking his Mathilda away, for taking away the last of his remaining sanity.
For that’s what it felt like, as though the last vestiges of his sanity had been stripped away, the last of his strength used on murdering the man who would seal his fate.
He’d barely survived the loss of Mathilda the last time. It was only desperate hope that she lived that had kept him going all these years. To learn she had been so close all this time without him knowing, without him being able to reach her, hurt in ways he never could have imagined before experiencing it. It was indescribable, the way the hole in his chest seemed to tear wider and wider with every waking moment, ripping painfully, gaping in a way he was sure could never be filled.
He felt sick with it, with this anguish, this searing pain that he couldn’t soothe. He’d lost his wife, now his daughter a second time, and there was no one left in this world for him, no one to hold his hand, to share his grief, to kiss him, to hold him close, to love all the irreparably damaged parts of himself he could scarcely bear to look at.
And to make matters worse, he’d killed a man. With his bare hands. Like it was nothing.
Those hands now shook before him as he raised them, staring at his outstretched fingers as though expecting to see them still coated and dripping with blood. He was almost certain he could feel the phantom slick of it and his stomach roiled with nausea.
He couldn’t even cry. It left him feeling raw and disgustingly inhuman, the way he couldn’t even shed a tear. Not for his wife, nor his daughter, nor even for the sorry state he found himself in.
He didn’t deserve this position, this life, and he knew it. More to the point, he was no longer sure he could bear it. The weight of it was suffocating.
Which was how he ended up here, fumbling with a syringe and a vial of morphine, willing his hands to steady enough to do the deed and be done with it, all of it.
It wasn’t a decision he came to lightly, though it was certainly one that had been brewing for some time, cropping up more and more frequently the longer life persisted. He felt only a faint flash of guilt for the fact that it would almost certainly be Jackson who found him, who had to deal with the aftermath of this act without him. He didn’t wonder if Jackson would grieve for him—he knew his disappearance from the world would be a blessing to the man, whether he’d admit it or not—but he did hope the sight of him wouldn’t be difficult to bear. He did care, deeply, regardless of what anyone might think.
He closed his eyes, taking one last, deep breath, and slid the syringe into his arm.
“Ah, fuckin’ Jesus.”
The unexpected voice came from behind him—he hadn’t even heard the door open—and a hand covered his own, wrestling for control. Cigarette smoke and the smell of Jackson’s cologne filled his nose, his arm throbbing as the needle moved around roughly until eventually it was freed from his flesh and flung God knows where.
“Why?” Jackson demanded. “Jesus fucking Christ, Reid, how could you—“ he cut off, his voice wavering, but Reid’s vision was already blurring at the edges.
“I truly am sorry,” he croaked as the world tilted, and the last thing he felt was Jackson’s arms encircling him before everything went dark.
—
Reid slowly became aware of hushed, arguing voices nearby, dragging him from the depths of a dreamless dark. Jackson and Drake and an unknown female, he noted, brain still hazy with the vestiges of sleep.
He listened for a while, body too heavy to move, mouth so thick with a cottony feeling that he couldn’t manage to utter a word even if he tried.
Then he remembered, and the animalistic whine that left him came unbidden, tearing its way from the depths of his chest where that gaping black hole remained.
A hand was pressed to his forehead, another to his chest, firm but somehow also gentle. “Take it easy, Reid.”
“How?” He grit out past his thick tongue, forcing his eyes open, chest heaving. “Why?”
“Sir—“
“Out,” Jackson demanded, and Reid felt a flash of gratitude amongst everything else.
Drake’s eyes darted from Reid to Jackson and back again before the woman took him gently by the arm, leading him out of the room.
“Just breathe, Reid,” Jackson whispered, hands still pressing him into the mattress, firm and insistent.
“Please,” he croaked, ashamed at the hot flood of tears that filled his eyes. He licked his dry lips, tongue still feeling too big for his mouth.
He watched as Jackson hesitated, biting his lip as he visibly raced from one thought to another before his eyes settled back on Reid. There was sadness there, a kind Reid hadn’t seen on Jackson before, but there was also so much love, so much compassion, that his breath caught in his throat. It somehow made his chest ache more.
“I’m trying really hard not to be mad at you right now,” Jackson admitted, voice wavering just a little. “‘Cause I know you musta been feelin’ all kinds of hell to try and do what you did.”
Jackson’s throat worked hard as he swallowed once, twice, three times, tilting his head upward so Reid could no longer see his expression. When his eyes at last met Reid’s again, they were red-rimmed and watery, and he looked almost as broken as Reid himself felt.
“I just—“ he broke off, taking a deep, shaky breath. “You shoulda come to me. Or Drake. You—“ another shuddering breath. “I can’t lose you like that, y’hear me?”
Reid nodded, because what else could he do? He couldn’t very well voice the many protests on the tip of his tongue when Jackson was clearly in so much pain at the thought of losing him, no matter how incomprehensible that idea was.
And it was incomprehensible despite the proof standing right in front of him. All he ever did was bring pain and misery and suffering to the people in his life, to those he’d lost and those who still remained. The fact that he’d added more while attempting to remove it entirely was confusing and disorienting.
Jackson took a seat beside the bed, hand resting idly on Reid’s chest, right above his heart.
“How you feeling?” Jackson asked quietly, meeting Reid’s gaze again.
“Embarrassed,” he answered, truthful though that wasn’t the half of it, and Jackson laughed wetly in return, rubbing at his eyes.
They sat in silence for a while, and it wasn’t uncomfortable, exactly, but there was a tension bubbling between them, different from their usual tension, and Reid was uncomfortably aware of his own vulnerability, of his inability to take this back, to make Jackson unknow the darkness in the depths of his soul.
“I’m sorry I left you alone,” Jackson whispered, dropping his head. “I saw that hollow look in your eyes and I shouldn’t’a left you on your own.”
“Don’t make me absolve you of my own wrongdoings,” Reid said quietly, covering Jackson’s hand with his own.
Jackson shook his head, sniffling a little. “I know a broken man when I see one, Reid, and I just left you on your own.”
“You couldn’t have known.”
Jackson shrugged, rubbing a hand over his face. “It ain’t about me and my feelings. I’m just sorry I didn’t mind yours better.”
“You can’t—“ Reid broke off, unsure how to finish that sentence.
Jackson couldn’t, what? Fix him? Fill the hole in his chest? Smooth out the edges so he didn’t snag on them every single day? Bring Mathilda back to him? Bring his wife back to him? All of that was true, yet none of it was what he meant, what he wanted to say.
“My feelings are not your problem,” he settled on. “My burdens are not yours to carry, nor is my darkness yours to dissolve. It is mine and mine alone, and I am only sorry that I dragged you into it.”
“You don’t need to do it all alone, Reid,” Jackson whispered, turning his hand over so he could grip Reid’s firmly. “You’ve got me, in all things, at all times. And if you can’t trust me—“
“I do.”
Jackson blinked at him, eyelashes clumped together with tears.
“I do trust you,” Reid said firmly, squeezing Jackson’s hand back.
“Then talk to me.”
Reid shook his head, casting his eyes to a blank patch of wall as a lump formed in his throat.
“Talk to me,” Jackson implored, leaning in enough for Reid to feel his breath.
“I don’t know how,” he admitted, voice sounding strangled. “It all—hurt is such a small word for the gaping, razor-sharp agony I feel and there’s absolutely nowhere to put it, no way to dispel it, no way to soothe it. It is just there, constantly, and today—“
“Today was your breaking point,” Jackson finished for him, and Reid nodded.
“I know we—“ Jackson broke off with a frustrated sigh. “Shit, Reid, we’ve been dancing around each other for so fucking long that maybe you’ve forgotten I actually care about you, but I’m always gonna be here. For as long as you’ll have me, y’hear?”
Reid nodded again, eyes stinging with the tears he was so desperately trying to hold back. He was so tired, so exhausted , wrung-out and heavy and he was trying so hard not to think about how much easier this would all be if he had not been interrupted, because he was also beginning to realise how much harder that may have been for Jackson, and it was enough for him to feel a flicker of regret, a flash of something that felt a little like being alive. It wasn’t much, but it would have to be enough.
“Look at me?” Jackson asked, practically pleaded in a tone Reid had never heard in his voice. “Please?”
Reid forced himself to look, forced himself to meet Jackson’s watery gaze with his own.
“You’ve no idea how much you mean to me,” Jackson whispered, offering a shaky smile. “And I’m tellin’ you this now in case you get it in your head otherwise. You and Susan, you’re all I’ve got. I already all but lost her and I’ll be damned if I’ll ever let you go. So promise me you’ll come to me, that you’ll remember that, if you find yourself back here again.”
Reid swallowed thickly and nodded, squeezing Jackson’s hand hard. He couldn’t say that he felt the same—there was too much else drowning out anything good he may have once felt, too much else going on to even examine the part of his torn up heart that belonged to Jackson—but it was enough to know, for now.
“Promise me,” Jackson insisted.
“I promise.”