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The Shadow Between
Shut me with thee, and from all fear;
so I might unlock the sleepless brood
of fences from my soul
and safely reach the perfect union in which
our hearts so beat together.
Robert Browning
***
The blast of a cannon pierces his ears in the middle of the night, cold and unforgiving. He’s awake. A gun is in his hand, he shoots, bones rattle, voices rasp. Muddied bodies lay around him on the damp ground. It’s cold, he’s not cold. Whose bodies, he wonders, and then he doesn’t. Mary is lost. He holds a wretched toy dog she had once owned, to keep in proof how near her breath he had been. But there’s no Downton now. How could it be? The world is falling. The wind whistles. The rats feast. His fists on his temples. Andromeda in her Temple. Ruins of the Temple. Lost lost lost…
He cries in a whisper at some vision, whether it came from a memory or a nightmare he cannot tell. He cries out twice, a cry that is no more than a breath as his body shakes, eyes wide and void. ‘It’s all wrong – all wrong, all wrong…not real not real’ his murmurs are lost in his own daze and become a sob. Mary’s eyes burst open.
It began with the Winter. The first snow triggered something he had buried deep down, snow red as blood, mud cold as ice. It began with nightmares. The episodes hit him at night, when no one but Mary could see. Sometimes he’d just thrash in his sleep, and she knows better than to approach him then. Other times, worse times, he wakes up in a state of shock – he speaks German, then French, he runs to the window in search of the Huns, sometimes he screams. He doesn’t recognize her. And then there are times like this, where he just refuges in himself. Catatonic state, the doctors called it. He sits and stares into another world, his eyes cold and unfeeling, lost to the ghost that claims him from her.
Each time, she pries him out of it. Matthew is hers, she seems to silently tell to this unknown force, and eventually he reaches back to her. Always. As promised.
Matthew is sitting still as a statue next to her. His eyes are scared when they meet hers, pleading, confused. He doesn’t move, the muscles in his body tense, his shoulder shake, only barely but enough for her to see.
With one swift movement, she straddles his lap and takes his hand in hers. Lost, he becomes mesmerized by the way she lets his hand rest on the growing swell of her belly first, palm wide open, and then trails it slowly to her naked breast. She holds it there, and her heart beats against his hand. Mine.
When their gazes finally meet, it’s still clouded and she knows the fog hasn’t released him to her. But his body reacts to the contact, inevitably, and with the barest shift, in the shadow that falls between the motion and the act, he’s hard inside her.
Urged on by a natural force, he flips them over and buries his face in her shoulder. Her legs enclose around his hips, strong and trusting, as he thrusts into her, desperately, like a drowning man gasping for air. It’s not how it always is; it’s not the same man who worships her body reverently, who kisses each inch of her skin in a awe, who whispers words of love as his hands slowly caress the curve of her breast and the skin where they’re joined, where they become one and a thousand. This is not the same man, as he’s pouring his despair in her with each thrust, using her as a willing vessel. But he needs her, and despite what it might look, it’s still lovemaking to Mary, who holds his body firm against hers, who runs her fingers in his hair and down his spine, who knows that her dear husband is in there and is giving him a chance to come back through and inside her. She frees him with each stroke of her hands. The vibration of his fears, irrupted violently within him, reverberates through her, only to die out immediately. And it begins where it always begins, deep inside her, a heat that spreads from her low abdomen to every inch of her, nerves tickling, limbs shaking, skin burning wherever it meets his, her head suddenly light. She comes with a silent cry, her walls clenching around him and spurring his own release.
He sinks down, shuddering against her breasts, tears wetting the hollow between her neck and shoulder. He’s come back to her. His voice, broken and hoarse, sounds small muffled by her own skin. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
Don’t be, she’d want to say. But instead she chastely kisses every inch of him she can reach without moving them, her hands soothingly caressing his head, him still hard inside her. She doesn’t want to let go, she doesn’t want to break this link between them, and so she cradles him to sleep, like this, humming an old song against his cheek as he repeats I love you over and over again, until Morpheus claims him.
Only then she lets him go and rolls them over, her head on Matthew’s chest, where she can feel his sleep is peaceful once again. As she closes her eyes, she spends a fleeting prayer of gratitude to a deity she didn’t use to believe in. Thank you for bringing him back. Thank you, thank you.
The morning after, he kisses the knuckles of her hand. One by one, followed by her palm, and keeps it against his own cheek as his eyes (warm, and blue, and tender, and Matthew) bore into her. She smiles back. The weeks sum into months, and the months become years. Every new Winter, Matthew holds her hand to sleep, but she doesn’t lose him to his ghosts again.