AN: I am participating in the NaNoWriMo. Tomorrow I will be starting to post the first chapter of what will be a completed story or at least 50,000 words written by the end of November. It is titled No More Mi Amore and is a AU that will involve many cannon characters and a few new ones.  So, meet me at my livejournal each day. It will only be posted there. The addy is under my bio here.

Continuation of And Then I Knew

Loss and Leases beta'd by France *MWAH*

When I woke up the first time I had no idea where I was. As soon as my eyes started to flutter open I could hear a voice calling my name, but then I fell back into the abyss I'd briefly awoken from. The second time, I had more feeling in my body and it ached like I'd been hit by a truck. Turns out, it was a baseball bat.

The breathing tube in my throat made it impossible and painful to pronounce any of the questions I wanted to ask about my surroundings. It didn't matter though, I was alone this time. There was no soft squeeze of a hand in my curled fist. My name was not spoken from my mother's lips in a worried, yet relieved gasp.

My ears heard beeps and noises that got louder the more I became aware of myself and of my body's existence in the cold space it occupied. A chemical sting assaulted my nose and I so badly wanted to lift my arm and scratch the burning tingles the air left in my nostrils. I was too weak, but I would learn that it was much more than that. My eyes felt raw and crusty as I looked up to the ceiling above. My head throbbed along with my heart. The lights were low in the room, but the overhead light above made me realize that I was in a hospital bed. It shone bright and irritated my eyes and mind to a point in which I could not fight them from closing again. My last thoughts were of the large bandage that I could see out of the corner of my eye, and I wondered how it had gotten there. It was painstakingly obvious that the agony was hidden underneath the white material.  I didn’t score 1500 on my S.A.T.'s for nothing.

The third time I woke up was the last time I'd have any sleep that wasn't attended by nightmares and fear of the unknown for a long, long time. I had no way of knowing that I had my very own guardian watching over me every night. Doctors rushed around me, touching me, prodding me, and asking me questions. All I wanted them to do was to leave me alone. Not to come so close to me. To not touch me! I could clearly see them all and hear their words of comfort that did nothing to ease the distress I felt from being completely overwhelmed with their existence. 

They thought I was scared because I'd just come out of a coma, but I had no idea why I was in one in the first place. It wasn't only that. It was so much more. I flinched and bucked away from them like a rodeo bull that’d been tormented while caged far too many times. I hated them all. I wanted to die or go back into that dull sleep I'd come from. At this point, it was my only means of escape. 

They didn't know that my moaning and screaming around the plastic going down my throat was because I was scared of them. Of all of them, even my own mother. She tried to calm me with soothing words, but they were all strange to me. Her touch was strange to me. It made my skin crawl and burn like I'd been branded by each gesture. I hated her too; my mother, the one who had sat bedside me until I'd woken up. 

She told me later that the second time I awoke, she had only begrudgingly gone to the bathroom in fear that she would miss her last chance of ever seeing my eyes on hers again. I only loved her then.

Weeks passed and I was able to look in the mirror at myself without cringing. I was able to think that one day I would truly get my beauty back. I thought that if I didn't look so broken, perhaps I wouldn't feel that way either. My blond hair had grown back from where they had shaved the spot, hiding the outward scar but doing nothing to hide all of the inner wounds. They had drilled into my skull to release the blood that had built up, but they released much more than that. 
I had died. I died while they were operating, piecing together my brain, stitching together and separating pieces that should have been or shouldn't have ever been touched. Touchy subject touch was.

I knew nothing of what my mother and friends referred to as 'The Bashing'. I had no memory of the prom, the couple of the days leading up to it or of a dance that I was told was so romantic that it sounded completely unreal, and it was… to me. 

In my head it was a story that had happened to someone else. Yet, I owned its climax so vividly that I couldn't escape from the fall that came after every good release. I couldn't bring myself to turn the pages and put more ink on the blankness of the page when I didn't truly believe what was written before them. I didn’t believe the words I wrote because they were as foreign to me as if they had been scripted in a language I knew with certainty that I could never learn.

She blamed him… my mother. She blamed my guardian angel. Though I had no idea my lover and my guardian angel were the same person until years later. How I doubted my visions or my gut instinct is beyond me now, but there was so much doubt back then it only seemed right that I didn't see all that he had done. She blamed me in retrospect; though, I'm not sure she realized it. By blaming what she thought was only a lifestyle I could pick or choose to have; it meant in turn that she blamed me for being who I was born to be. I couldn't be some different version me, not in that way or a version of me that would appeal to others. My attacker could not have that too. My mother didn't look at it that way though, not consciously. When she realized that I was better off being who I was and loving who I was despite what happened, she finally blamed who was really at fault. My attacker.

I blamed hate. Oh, I blamed the near-murderer too, don't get me wrong. I blamed a boy I'd grown up with. A boy that I had lustful thoughts of; a boy who had returned my affections and then hated himself for it; a boy who would never be man enough; a boy that would never know the true measure of a man; a boy who had become jealous of me, of me and the loving relationship I had with my man; and a boy, by these results, must have been insecure of his own sexuality.

We had what he never could: the ability to overcome hate and fear and the strength to express our love for one another, no matter the cost. The boy couldn't have done that because he was consumed with hate and fear to the point that his jealousy and frustration with himself came out with violence. 

Even though I couldn't remember our footsteps or the music, I could never forget the beat of his heart that was always beside mine. I felt it that first night and it was the only thing I could bare to be close enough to feel then. He was always the one.

He tried to recreate that dance with me; the dance that we had shared at my prom where all of my classmates stood in awe at the love that reverberated between us. My arm and hand shook from the exertion of simply touching him. Not because I was so excited to be near him for once, but because of my insecurities. My shorter legs were clumsy against his long strong ones as we danced to a song I mistakenly told him I thought was corny. The pain in his hazel eyes clearly showed guilt and sadness at my statement. The mist that clouded over them, added to the tortured expression on his handsome face which was almost too much to bare. I became frustrated and wished that I could remember. I hated myself in that moment for making this more painful for him. He then told me he wished I'd been there with him in his memories of the dance. As if I wasn't truly there. That hurt, but it was true. He later told me he wished he could forget. His voice choked with emotions I wished he never had to feel in the first place. I only hoped it was the pain that he wanted gone and not the memory he had of his declaration of love to me. 

We stared into each other’s eyes, my blue eyes apologizing for so many things that I couldn't change and I saw his love and regret in his own. He was so far away from me then, away from us, trapped inside a tragic memory until I took him into my arms. I was able to touch him and comfort him but I was not ready for the full impact of his touch quite yet. 

All of it, made me realize that every time I'd listen or even think about the song in the future, that word would never describe what the lyrics and music meant to us, to him that night. It had only been ridiculously romantic. I didn't remember the dance or being hit in the head with the bat. Not for a while. I didn't remember the sound of his voice calling my name to warn me, making me turn my head at just the right angle which, by chance, caused me to live. I didn't remember any of that until a child's birthday present brought it all into swinging focus. His child's first birthday, the anniversary of the night we met. Irony seems to take cheap shots at he and I. Of course, with what I did remember, I was still left without the memory of the dance, of the beauty I'm sure we were in each other’s arms until it was stolen from us. From me and tainting him. Instead I held onto him, buried my head into his chest, and swayed as the images raced behind my eyelids. I clutched his shirt in my fists, my entire body seized up with each new revelation. He held me and grounded me like he'd done so many times before, whispering his love with actions as his words soothed my ears, breaking into the manic inside my head.

I was able to accept his touch the way I had before so many times. I was able to feel him deeper within me than either of us would have ever thought was possible. I wasn't scared of getting too close. The only fear between us that night was the fear of having to let go. He didn't say those three letter words. It would take another near-death experience years later for me to hear those words, but I saw them in every change of his eyes and I heard them with every kiss of his lips.

I still could not let anyone touch me but him. Every time I went out in public it was a test to see whether or not I could hold it together long enough to reach him, to stand by his side. I could remember the times that I walked proudly and without fear and that perhaps frustrated me even more, because I could not understand why it was so hard for me to do something that seemed so normal. Why couldn't I walk a block down the street by myself in broad daylight? Why in the sunshine was I still afraid of the dark? Why did someone bumping into me cause sweat to immediately run out of my pours and my blood to run cold?

He held my tired cramped hand until I was able to do that on my own. I absorbed his soft warm skin into my gimp hand like a miracle salve for the soul.
With that new sense of freedom I realized that there was still so much more to overcome.

I was an artist. I wanted to draw and paint and sketch the feelings within me. I needed them to pour out of me so badly. I knew that the paper or the canvas would not be frightened and would not forsake my dark thoughts and my anger. The canvas could not hurt me when I expressed my love for him, my lover.
It was made evident over a short time, that I had no tool left within me anymore. I was trying to sketch my muse only to see his beautiful shape molested, there would be no art. I had lived. But, had I really? I had no form of expression left within me anymore.

How could I go on without being able to create? How was I supposed to express myself, my need to be an artist, when my hand was as unsteady as a two year old holding a crayon?

I would have been happy coloring inside lines, but it wasn't only that. The injury to my brain had caused the nerves in my right arm and hand to short circuit, and it was painful training my muscles in therapy to make up for the lack of my brain function. I was taught to pick up a paperclip, it hurt to curl my hand around a tennis ball, but for some reason I thought I could just go back to drawing again. There was no way I could forget how to do that! Right? I hadn't forgotten. I had lost the control and the ability to a hold a pencil for more than five minutes without my hand balling up into a fist so tight, that my fingernails would cut deeply into my palms. There was nothing I could do. There was no quick therapy for my gimp hand. The miracle salve may have been transferred through that hand but it hadn't retained any of its healing ability. The hope to release all of my anger at what had happened to me and to him was so palpable, I could see a million works of art coming from it before my eyes. The injustice that occurred so unfairly wanted to burst forth into my art, as everything from me always had. But it couldn't.

I had to learn new ways to achieve simple techniques of drawing, by using a computer that he bought for me. Of course my anger at what I thought was false hope kept me from it at first. However, the pull of inspiration my lover constantly was to me, brought me towards accepting my new self. 

I had to learn how to walk down the street again by myself. He had taught me.
I had to learn to let go of who I thought I would be and take steps to become the man I would be. He built those steps. I learned that I wasn’t the only one who had been hit. My physical and emotional injuries were inside him as well. He had been witness to it all and had felt guilty. Not only because of what my mother had said to him that made him stay away from me at first, but because he had felt helpless. I learned that I had to help ease his guilt and pain to ease my own. I loved him. I had to learn to control the anger that welled up inside of me, anger I wanted to unleash on the boy that had hurt me, that had taken away so much of my life. Years later, I had the opportunity to move on, away from him, and I did.

I also had to learn what real love was. It was everything he gave me, everything he was to me, everything we were together, and everything we grew to be. I learned to love my new art. He always thought I was talented, but now he thinks I'm brilliant. I learned all about the love I had for him. It grew as I did, as we did.
I learned to love myself. He loved me to the point that he gave me everything I ever dreamed of.

And I had to learn to have love for the loss. It made me appreciate the gain.
How else could I grow otherwise? How else could I not let my attacker win?
How else could I still be beside him and him beside me?

There is no other way. There are only so many new leases. There are far fewer new chances at life.