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“You broke my heart, Jamie.” She was breathing heavily. Trying to stop the water from falling from her eyes. How many more tears would she cry for this man?
“Ye think that it wasn’t hard for me? That it did’na hurt me?” His voice was rough. His accent always got thicker when he was upset.
“Hurt… hurt you?” She repeated the word. Hurt. “It may have hurt you. But you broke me. You may have been hurt. But you weren’t broken.” She shook her head. Damn her eyes. She could feel the salty water making tracks down her cheeks. She looked down, too afraid to meet his eyes. How much more could one person break?
“Sass-”
She hissed at the pet name about to fall from his lips and he stopped abruptly.
“Ye dinna understand what it was like for me.”
“What it was like for you?” She repeated incredulously. “No I bloody well don’t know what it was like for you because you didn’t talk to me. You just left.” She paused as she felt the knife in her heart twist again at the truth in her words. “You left. No reason. One night, bags packed and you were gone.” She laughed humorlessly, “Sure. Be hurt. Feel that I have wronged you in someway. Because you’re right. I don’t understand. I didn’t then. And I sure as hell don’t understand why you’ve come back now.”
He had the good sense to at least look abashed at that, though she didn’t see it. She couldn’t look at him.
Broken. He had broken her heart when he left. Picked up his things and left- like he’d never been there.
She’d switched laundry detergents, washed her sheets, removed the smell of him from the house, from her memory.
She’d taken down the pictures of them together and locked them away. The weeks after he left were a haze to her. She went to work, she came home, she ate because she knew she had to, she slept because her brain shut down. She wasn’t really living. Claire was robotic. Going through the motions, waiting for each day to get better.
It did. Slowly. It became more than routine to get up, shower and go to work. She found some happiness in her work once more and her coworkers commented that she looked happier.
Happy. She was never truly happy now. He’d taken that from her. Which was ridiculous of course. He didn’t hold her happiness and she shouldn’t have put so much of her faith in a man that was flawed. But she’d loved him. Deeply. From her soul.
When he left, her heart had broken; her soul had fractured and she didn’t know how to put any of it back together again. People said that a broken heart was like a clean snap of a twig. One minute whole: the next in two.
But it wasn’t like that for Claire. Her broken heart was suffocating. It was a slow and deliberate crush under the weight of loneliness and depression. Her heart didn’t snap like a twig. It was slowly squeezed of its life. The love that she’d held for anything oozed out of her, leaving behind a despairing loneliness and isolation that faced her every morning.
She wanted her heart to break quickly. Crack or snap once and then she could begin the work of healing. But the agonisingly gradual process of compressing her soul under the gravity of her dysphoria meant that she couldn’t even think about healing. There was no chance to heal when a wound was still open and bleeding.
He said that it hurt him as well. She knew pain. She knew hurt.
Did he know broken? Did he know what it felt like to break? To look in the mirror and have no idea who the person was that was looking back at you? To look at yourself, recognise your features but somehow, you were lost?
Disassociation, the doctors called it. She’d written a paper on it when she was at university. She’d known what it meant theoretically then, but she was completely unprepared to experience it herself.
She’d put too much faith in him. Invested too much of herself in him and when he was no more, what was left of her? An empty shell of a woman, whose heart would not- could not stop bleeding.
He was flawed, so was she. They never pretended to be perfect. They fought, they disagreed but to have him leave so unexpectedly, so quickly, shifted her. The world came off its axis for a moment and she struggled to right herself in this new world. A world without Jamie.
She’d thought that they would grow old together. That they would lose each other to life eventually. She had never thought that she would lose him through choice.
Faith and trust in a flawed human. It was her own fault, but she couldn’t bring herself to regret it. Even as she was trying to suture her still weeping heart, she couldn’t bring herself to regret falling in love with him.
And now, here he was, six months later, standing in front of her, like nothing had changed.
She was not the same person and she was sure that he wasn’t either. How could he be? How could she?
“Will ye let me explain?” He asked cautiously. She still hadn’t looked at him again. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t.
Why should she let him explain anything? What would an explanation do to a damaged heart? Would there be any comfort in knowing the reasons he had left her? Would it just bring more pain? Could she handle any more pain?
Claire sniffed loudly. The tears falling from her eyes causing her nose to go as well. She hated crying. She hated crying in front of him. More than anything, she hated crying because of him.
“Please. I ken ye dinna understand. But I would…I think when I tell ye why, ye will.”
Claire finally looked up at him, wiping the tears from her eyes as she did so. She couldn’t actually meet his eyes, her gaze focused somewhere on his cheekbones, the two small scars that she’d loved tracing with her fingertips late at night. The mole on his left cheek, slightly raised from the skin. Not an imperfection by any stretch of the imagination. It suited him.
The ridge on his nose- broken at the age of twelve in a fight with his brother, neither of whom came out of it without scars. The almost blonde stubble that was scattered along a square jaw that Claire had once joked, “could cut a man”. Eyes- she couldn’t meet his eyes. She knew the depth of the blue, sparkling when he laughed, storming when he was angry.
The memories of her fingers tracing the familiar path along his jaw, the mole, the scars and the way he would close his eyes as she tried to memorize his feature by touch alone. Her memory didn’t do him justice. He was beautifully made- made for her, she had thought. But she should have known that it would come to an end. Good things were never made to last.
“I can’t forget what happened. Explanation or not. And I don’t know… I don’t want to forgive you. Hating you is so much easier and I think I deserve easier for a moment.”
“Claire, I -”
She held up her hand to stop him.
“I can’t, Jamie. I want to. But I can’t. Now now -”
“Then when?” Jamie interrupted, taking a step toward her.
Claire took an involuntary step backward away from him and flinched as though he had raised his hand to her. Jamie was dumbstruck at her reaction and froze in place, not daring to move.
“I don’t know if there will ever be a time that I will be ready to hear why you broke my heart.”
“Please Claire. It’s important that you know.”
“Important for who? For you? To relieve the guilt? So that you can feel some sort of justification for leaving me? Don’t worry about it. You can leave here in the knowledge that I’m fine. I’m still alive. I’ve moved on.”
“Have ye? Moved on?” Jamie asked taking a tentative step toward her. Claire stood her ground this time, arms crossed protectively against her chest.
“I’m trying,” she answered honestly. Though why she owed him any kind of truth about her life, she didn’t know.
“Because I haven’t. I haven’t thought about anythin’ else for six months.”
Six months ago Claire craved to know why he left, why he’d given up on them. But now?
It didn’t make sense for him to miss her. It didn’t make sense for him to care.
He’d made the choice to leave. He’d made the choice to pack his bags and go. So why should he think of nothing else for the entire time that they were apart?
Did she need his reasoning? Did she even want it? Claire had spent so long working on herself, to open herself up again, to even consider the possibility of falling in love again. But she knew, deep and buried in her soul, she would never love someone like she’d loved Jamie. And maybe that also included Jamie again. Could she ever love him like she had before?
“Would ye believe that I left… because it was what was best for you?” Jamie asked tentatively.
Claire couldn’t help the scoff that came from her mouth. It was an involuntary sound but the idea that he would leave and it would be anything but soul crushing for Claire was laughable.
Claire glanced up at Jamie briefly and was surprised to see that he was completely serious and was totally confident in what he’d said to her.
“No. I wouldn’t believe that.” Claire shook her head and felt a grin come to her face. Ridiculous. It was a ridiculous thought and she was having a ridiculous reaction to it. She should be screaming, crying, throwing punches and instead all she could do was laugh. She felt a chuckle burst through her lips at Jamie. She sounded hysterical.
“That’s… that’s laughable, Jamie. Of all the things you’ve ever said to me… that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”
“It’s the truth, Sassenach.”
Claire felt her heart clench at the nickname that only sounded right coming from Jamie’s mouth. One minute she was laughing at the ridiculousness of what he was saying, the next her heart was compressed again hearing a familiar, at one time, loving nickname. Her stomach flipped as if she was on a roller coaster.
“I just… you might think that… but there’s nothing… there’s no way that I,” Claire paused trying to think through what she was trying to say. “You might think you were doing what was best for me… best for us, but there will never be any part of me that agrees with that.”
She watched as Jamie swallowed heavily and nodded slightly. For the first time she looked properly in his eyes and was genuinely surprised to see tears brimming on the blond eyelashes surrounding the blue of his eyes. She shouldn’t have looked in his eyes. For all that Jamie was talented at hiding his emotions, or what he was thinking, looking into his eyes not she could see the pain and regret in them now. Red rimmed- almost hungover in nature, they were not nthe eyes of Jamie as she knew him.
“If ye’d let me explain to ye-” Jamie began before Claire cut him off.
“When did you fall out of love with me?” She asked abruptly.
“I did’na.”
“When did you fall out of love with me?” Claire asked again, slower, unsatisfied with his response. “Because that’s the only reason I can think of that would cause you to pack up your bags and vanish. It’s the only thing that I could think of. You gave me no explanation of why you were leaving. I spent,” Claire took a deep breath as the tears in her throat made her voice wobble, threatening to choke her, “I spent six months, evaluating and assessing our relationship wondering when you fell out of love with me, when you began to hate me so much that you would leave me with nothing. Did I work too much? Did you meet someone else? Was it all my fault? Was I ignoring the signs? All these questions, daily, running and running and running through my head. Never giving me a break. Making me question everything about myself. So, I need to know. When did you fall out of love with me?”
“I did’na, Claire. Never.”
“I can’t-” Claire gasped as the lump in her throat threatened to choke her. Jamie reached out to her and she turned away from him. She didn’t think that she could bear to be touched by him.
“No explanation.” The words burst from her before she could stop them. “Nothing. Like you’d never existed. Just gone. And you come back now thinking, what? That I’d just be sitting here waiting for you?” Claire could see his somewhat blurred reflection in the window in front of her. Jamie was still reaching out to her, his hand hovering in the air. She was breathing heavily. She was snapping.
Maybe this was what people meant when they said that the heart broke like a twig snapping. Was this how she finally broke? She’d been crushed for months, suffocated and desolate. Was this the moment that she finally broke? A clean snap in two? The final tethers holding her to Jamie. The reason she couldn’t move on from him.
The anger. Was it that anger that fractured the last little piece of her?
“You left me with nothing after I’d given you everything. Every part of me. You had it. I gave it to you gladly. And you took it. You took it all Jamie. Until you decided it wasn’t enough, until I wasn’t enough. And you left.” Claire could feel her pulse beating heavily in her temples. “I don’t want your explanations. I don’t want your reasons. I don’t want…” Claire paused before the lie passed her lips. “I don’t want you.”
“Claire…” Jamie pleaded taking a step towards her. He was going to touch her arm and she braced herself for the contact.
Snap.
There it was; the final breaking point. As soon as Jamie’s large, warm hand came in contact with her shoulder, so gentle, so familiar- Claire felt it. She was completely broken.
She craved his touch. She craved him: and now she was completely broken.
Claire buckled under the weight of her heartbreak and her knees collapsed. She heard Jamie yelp in shock as he moved to catch her before she hit the stiff wooden floors.
No. He was too close. She could smell him. The familar smell of his laundry detergent. The smell of his aftershave. The smell of Jamie. It washed over her and she felt light headed.
His arms were wrapped around her as they crashed onto the floor together. Jamie took the weight of the fall and an “ooff” of a breath was pushed out of his lungs as Claire came into contact with him.
It was too much. The smell of him. Being cradled in his arms again. The sigh of contentment that he made as his nose nuzzled into her wild curls. It was familiar. It was... pain.
White-hot, searing pain lancing through Claire’s stomach, her temples, her finger tips. She made a sound of distress and Jamie’s arms loosened on her slightly and she found herself gripping his upper arms, too afraid to let him go, too afraid to touch him; stuck somewhere in the middle.
She whimpered but the all encompassing pain that had engulfed her body at first was subsiding and all that was left behind was a dull ache.
“Claire?” Jamie’s voice was soft and careful as he brushed some of her curls away from her eyes. He was so tender with her. Didn’t he know that every touch caused her physical pain? The sound of his voice, saying her name, like it was made for his lips- it hurt.
“You have to go,” she whispered. Her throat was hoarse, as if she had been yelling for hours. Her body was limp, pushed to the point of exhaustion. She’d given up and she’d given up in Jamie’s arms. The searing pain was the pain of a heart finally broken. A heart that had been beaten and trampled, that was weak and fighting for life. A weak pulse, threatening to give up.
And then with a touch from Jamie, an electric jolt to the system, her heart was restarted. And it hurt. Nobody ever said that healing was painful. The break was supposed to be the painful part. The healing was supposed to be… healing. It was supposed to give her life again. She didn’t think that healing was supposed to tear her apart again.
But she was whole when she was with Jamie. And she hated him for it. That after all this time, after all the pain and the heartache; when she was with him, she could breathe.
“I’m so sorry, Claire. I dinna think I’ve said it yet. I… Christ, to hold ye again, it’s like my heart will beat outta my chest, but to hold ye when I’m the one that hurt ye… feels like my heart is bein’ ripped out of me again.”
“Again?” Claire asked weakly. She was leaning into him. She couldn’t help it. He was solid and it had been far too long since she’d been held by someone. By anyone. By him.
“When I left, I left my heart with ye. It’s sounds so stupid. I canna sleep. I canna eat. Simple things, I canna enjoy them any more. Everything reminds me of ye. It was stupid to leave. It was… I was trying to help ye, I swear it, I thought it would be best. I thought I was holdin’ ye back. Ye deserve to be so much more, ye deserve to have so much more, an’ I could’na give it to ye. I still can’t. But I’m too selfish. I need ye. I’ve always needed ye.”
The words were pouring out of Jamie and Claire stiffened in his arms.
“I’ve wanted ye since the first time I’d seen ye. But I’ve loved ye… well I think I’ve loved ye just as long. I dinna have a life without ye.”
Claire shook her head. It’s wasn’t right for her to love someone this much, while at the same time hating them with everything she had.
“Ye make me want to be better. Ye make me better. And without ye… I can survive, as I’m sure ye can, but it’s no’ living. It’s existing. I dinna want to just exist, Claire. I want to live. I’m so sorry. I’ve pushed ye away… I’ve pushed ye beyond… beyond what anyone should bear, I canna tell ye how sorry I am. I ken ye hate me, I hate me, but I need ye. I need ye to forgive me.”
“How,” Claire’s voice cracked and she cleared her throat before starting again, “how could we ever… we’ll never be what we were.”
“I ken that.”
Claire felt Jamie nod as his nose brushed against her scalp.
“Do you? Because you’re coming back like… like I’ve just been waiting for you to come back. I’m a different person now.”
“Aye, I ken, nor am I. I suppose I’m askin’... will ye forgive me?”
“How can you ask me that?” Claire’s voice broke again and a fresh wave of tears started from her eyes and she shuddered in his arms.
Jamie spluttered a nonsensical response, words mumbled (I love you, I need you, I’m sorry, I can’t live without you), words running together as she felt tears in her hair. He was crying. Claire had only ever seen Jamie cry twice in his life. Once, two weeks after his father had passed away, and again, when his niece Maggie was in hospital. Not once had Jamie every cried over Claire, never had he cried in front of her if he could help it. Both times he’d turned and shrugged away from her touch. He hadn’t let her comfort him, no matter how much she had wanted to.
Now she could feel the dampness in her hair as he continued to repeat what seemed to be becoming a sort of mantra (please, forgive me, I love you, I’m sorry). He was gripping her tightly against his chest, as if when he let go she would simply disappear. He spoke in Gaelic, and so low that she could not have told what he said, even had she known the words. But the whispering voice was thick, and the moonlight from the casement behind him showed the tracks of the tears that slid unrehearsed down his own cheeks.
She hated him- hated him for what he did to her, for how he left her. She hated him for his apologies, she hated that today was the first time he was truly showing her how much he loved her. She hated that it felt right in his arms, like the piece of her that had disappeared with Jamie when he left was finding its way back home.
Claire hated that she loved him. She hated that she knew she would take him back, because he was right. She could survive without him, but it wasn’t living. She hated that she was only existing without him. She hated that her heart had skipped a beat at the sight of him standing in front of her, palms up in surrender, in apology.
She hated who she was without him and she hated that she was better when she was with him. She hated depending on him, she hated that she still trusted him. She hated that logically she knew it was wrong, that she shouldn’t want him anymore, that her heart was cracked and breaking, it was suffocated, crushed what she thought was beyond repair, but at the sight of Jamie she felt like she was taking a breath for the first time in weeks and her heart started to beat again.
“I hate you so much, Jamie.” The words were a whisper from her dry and cracked lips. Jamie’s mantra stopped abruptly and a shudder went through this body and echoed through Claire’s.
“I hate what you did to me. I hate the way that you left. I hate… I hate you so much.”
“Ye… ye canna forgive me?” He sounded so desperate, so lost. She had never heard him sound so broken before and she felt her broken heart beat irregularly in her chest.
“I hate that you broke me, you broke my heart and I hate, more than anything, I hate,” Claire throat closed up and she had to clear it a few times before she could speak again. “I hate that after everything, after hating you so much, I can’t stop loving you.”
Jamie’s breath left him in a whoosh and he pulled her roughly against his chest.
“I love ye, I’ve never stopped. I never will.” Jamie spoke quickly as if he was afraid that she would take the words back.
“I don’t know how you can ask me if I’ll take you as you are, no matter how much we’ve both changed, because no matter how much I might hate you right now, I’ll have you, whoever you are, no matter how much we’ve both changed, I want you anyway I can.”
Jamie twisted, moving Claire so that rather than cradling her from behind she could see his face. Although she had felt the dampness in her hair, and knew that Jamie had been crying, she was still surprised to see his red rimmed, still leaking eyes.
“I love ye, Claire. I promise that ye will not doubt it for another day as long as we both live.”
Claire swallowed heavily at the sincerity in his voice.
“I… may I… kiss ye?” Jamie’s asked shyly, waiting for her permission before moving.
Claire found that she had lost her voice somewhere along the line and simply nodded in reply.
He was hesitant at first. A soft peck against her lips. Almost not a kiss at all. Just holding Claire tightly for a moment, as if he was assuring himself that this was what she wanted.
He pulled back to look at her, to make sure that this was ok. In truth she had thought of this moment deeply, obsessed over it as it clouded every other rational thought of how much she should hate him. The moment that she would see him again, the moment that she would give him a piece of her mind; the moment that she would have a chance to turn him away. But this moment wasn’t anything like she thought that it would be. It was soft and tender and she was pulling him closer, she wasn’t turning him away because what was life without him but an empty black void of despair and loneliness.
As his watery eyes ran over her face, seeking permission, asking for forgiveness she leaned forward and connected their lips again. His hands moved to her face, cupping her jaw as he kissed her, thumbs wiping away tears that she didn’t even know were falling. Her hands were steady on his arms, feeling the solid realness of him, confirming that yes he was here, she hadn’t just imagined this, from her love starved brain.
Jamie broke from the kiss first and buried his head in Claire’s neck and she could feel his lips moving over her skin. He did always like her neck. He was mumbling something in between each press of his lips to her skin but so muffled by his proximity to her that she couldn’t make out a single word.
“I don’t know what you’re saying,” Claire said, her heart beating steadily in her chest for the first time since she had seen his packed bags by the front door.
“It does’na matter. Stuff and nonsense really,” Jamie answered pulling back from her skin to look at her before he leant forward and tenderly kissed her again.
Breaking, healing; suffocating, breathing. Arcs on an emotional pendulum that felt like it had nearly killed Claire. But it hadn’t. She still lived.
They still lived.