Solace

"Dan, what?" She asked and he stared at her with such haunted, pain-filled eyes that she knew instantly. He felt guilty.

"I'm sorry, Karen." He said in a broken voice, hitching with sobs as he started to get to his feet, shaking all over. "I shouldn't have... I didn't mean to..." He started but couldn't get out what he wanted to say and she realized that he thought he had raped her.

She moved more quickly than she thought possible and grasped his wrists and pulled him back down to the floor before she wrapped her arms around him and just held him tight. He was tense, his muscles as hard as iron bars and the fear and uncertainty so strong in him that she could feel it echoing within herself.

"Dan, you didn't force me." She said soothingly after a long time and he flinched so sharply that she knew she had hit on the truth. "I needed and wanted this easily as much as you did."

He moved back a little to look at her, where she lay on the floor looking up at him. He sat back on his knees and pulled her into his lap, holding onto her and she held onto him right back, each consoling the other in their grief. After a few long minutes she moved out of his lap and sat with her back to the counters, giving him a little space and yet not leaving him alone... she never wanted to leave him alone again. They needed each other so badly that she couldn't even describe what she was feeling with words. She just knew that if she had to leave right now she would die. The rational, adult part of her mind knew that this was not the right foundation for a relationship; that they would be basing it on mutual grief and each of them was just a surrogate for someone they had both lost. But she didn't care. She needed him and he needed her and that was all that they had left.

He looked at her with such haunted eyes that she felt tears on her cheeks and she felt dizzy with exhaustion and loss of blood, but she had to say what she was feeling. She had to share with him something that no one else had ever heard.

"The night she..." She started and saw the pain in him, the mirror of the pain in herself, and the words left her so suddenly that it was physically painful. She flinched and recoiled and had to start over.

"That night." She began again, knowing that he would understand like no one else ever could. "That night, I couldn't sleep so I went for a walk. She was just a block or two away and I heard the impact..."

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ONE YEAR EARLIER

The night was cool, clear and open and Karen enjoyed the muted sounds of the city and the dim halo of the light that the downtown core shed up against the sky. She couldn't see the skyline from here, but she knew it by heart. She had always lived in Toronto and she couldn't imagine living anywhere else. She smiled and turned a corner and then heard the brief bark of tires as brakes locked and the crunch of impact. The sounds stopped her cold and she looked in that direction. She had never heard a sound like that before, and her curiosity and the cold dread she had felt as Bobbi drove away mixed together and she started that way as fast as she could go, moving at something more than a jog but less than a flat out run and she was nearly bowled over by the man going the other way. He was running as fast as he could and she looked after him with askance clear on her face.

He looked to be in his early twenties, dressed in designer clothes and carrying a cell phone. She felt a sudden clench of dread and turned to run back in the direction he had just come from. She saw the two cars and recognized the little gray hatchback instantly. Her fear washed over her and she ran to the car. The SUV had hit the driver's side so hard the little car was almost destroyed and Karen screamed as she saw the blood on the windows and dripping from the twisted door, as she saw the tangled mass of red hair in the back seat and knew that nothing could have survived that.

But she was wrong.

She ran to the far side of the car and wrenched the passenger door open so hard that it came off, the frame bent and the hinges damaged. She didn't care as she climbed into the back and reached for the still form strapped into the car seat. Aria was so very still, her little face unmoving and Karen knew instantly that she was gone. She wailed and stroked the toddler's little face with such urgency, as if she could call back what had been lost but there was nothing she could do. She sobbed and then she heard the voice.

"K... Karen..." The familiar sound came and Karen snapped her head up to see that Bobbi was moving.

Karen pulled out her cell and quickly dialled in 911 as she moved to see her friend, but she felt the cold dread as she saw Bobbi. Her friend had turned slightly so her back was to the door and her arms had come around her heavy belly in the desperate hope of saving her unborn child. But there was no hope of it, no chance of saving the child and Karen could see the hopelessness in both mother and child both. Bobbi was going to die, and her child had already been lost. Tears welled in her eyes and Bobbi actually smiled, being brave for her friend.

"I should have said yes..." Bobbi managed in a voice almost too soft to be heard and Karen looked up at her as Bobbi raised one blood-stained hand to caress her friend's cheek. "Back in college... when you made that pass at me... I should have said yes... I wanted to so badly that it hurt... but I was afraid... unsure... and I have regretted it ever since..." She said in a slowly softening voice as her life drained out of her body Karen was dimly aware of the tinny voice from her cell phone, but she ignored it as she stared at Bobbi. She sobbed and reached up to brush the hair back from her friend's face and Bobbi gently kissed her palm.

"I wish... I wish that I had... that I had... I... I wish..." She said as her eyes fluttered closed.

"I know." Karen said, the pain like a knife in her heart as the grief really took hold of her like a clawed hand in her chest. "I know." She said and Bobbi smiled.

"My babies... are my babies... are they..." She tried to ask and Karen nodded as tears flowed down her face.

"They're fine." She lied and Bobbi smiled, painfully beautiful in that instant.

"Then... take care of them for me... take care... take... take care of Dan." She said and her hand slipped down.

Karen grabbed at her friends arm, not even feeling the jagged piece of metal open up her skin, not even feeling the injury that would start a year of self-harm as she kissed Bobbi's palm and she felt the rapid, faint flutter of the pulse in her friend's wrist as it stopped. She felt the last beat of Bobbi's heart and she wailed, kissing her palm and trying to call her back, trying to get her to linger for just one more minute, one more second, one more moment. She was still wailing when the medics arrived, when the police cars and fire trucks squalled to a stop in the street around her, sirens wailing and lights flashing. It took three firefighters to pull her out of the car as she wailed and wept and tried to cling to her friend. People came out of houses and gathered around to ogle the scene as Karen screamed herself hoarse and tried so desperately to get back to Bobbi.

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NOW

"...we loved her, loved them both. And we both lost them." She said as tears flowed down both of their cheeks. "And I broke my promise to her; I didn't do the last thing she ever asked of me as she died right in front of me. I was broken, Dan. I did everything I could think of to feel something again." She showed him her arm, where the largest of her many scars was still untouched by those around it, the place where she had been cut by the jagged metal.

"I started cutting just after the funeral, just once or twice a week or so, but then suddenly I was cutting two or three times a day sometimes and the pain was enough to make me weep again. I didn't want to forget her, didn't want to let her go. I felt like... like some part of her went into me when I cut my arm in that car, some part of her and Ari and the baby went into me with their blood. But the pain from the cuts was bad sometimes so I started looking for other things, I smoked pot and snorted coke and took ecstasy, I even smoked meth once trying to get something like that feeling again, the feelings I had when I was with her. That was my spiral... that was my self-destruction. I fucked anyone who asked, even people I didn't know, people I didn't trust and it was getting worse every day. I was playing Russian roulette with my body and the only reason I didn't come away with worse than scars was pure luck... or maybe Bobbi was watching over me like a guardian angel. But a cop found me passed out in my car in front of a convenience store and took me to Mount Sinai hospital downtown. This was about three months ago, and I spent more than two months in the psychiatric ward there.

"But I got cleaned up and I got the help I needed and I know I've got a long way to go, but I'm getting better. I still feel the need to cut; I still feel the craving for something to make my brain go numb so I can stop remembering that night, still feel the urge to spread my legs for the world like that's all I'm any good for now. I can close my eyes and still see her, still see Ari." She shook her head and regretted it as the room spun around her, she was so dizzy that she knew she would pass out soon. "I regret a lot of the things I've done in the last year, a lot of the things I've said and the places I went looking for something that was lost. But I don't regret what we just did."

He looked at her, his eyes so haunted, so filled with a pain that she knew intimately. She leaned forward and kissed him tenderly and he returned it. After a long moment she sagged against him and curled into his lap and he just held her for a while as the world seemed to tilt and whirl in her mind, as she remembered things that she didn't want to remember... things she never wanted to forget... and when she opened her eyes there was a pall of grey over everything and her vision as narrowed down so that she could just see in front of her, all periphery gone and sparks dancing across what was left. She licked her lips and regretted that, her mouth so dry that her craving for something she couldn't have came roaring back like a flood.

"I'm going to pass out in a moment." She said softly and she felt him nod. "I don't need to see a doctor, I just need rest, and when I wake up I'll need food and water. But I'm tired, and I've lost some blood so I'm too weak to..."

She passed out in the middle of it and Dan held her for a while right there. She was too warm, as if she was fevered, and she felt small and frail in his arms as he held her. But after a long time he stood, lifting her with relative ease and he carried her in to where he had made his bed in the corner of the room. He had slept there for a year and it stank of sweat and sorrow, but he laid her down on the mattress and covered her with a blanket before he turned back to the house. He had wallowed in loss and pain for a year, but he wasn't the only one, he hadn't lost her alone and Karen had needed help that he hadn't been there to give. He had run and hid and they had both suffered alone when they didn't need to. With grim resolve he walked to the bathroom to wash himself off. He dressed in jeans and a t-shirt then he started digging through boxes and piles of forgotten possessions. He found the bed frame and carried it to the master bedroom and in an hour he had the bed together and made so he went down and got her. But as soon as he pulled the filthy covers back he saw that she was as in need of washing as he was so he stripped down before carried her to the bathroom and held her carefully in his lap as he got the shower started and took the head down to wash her all over.

There was a lot of blood, but the cut on her arm wasn't very bad when he got a look at it. Still, she had bled a lot and he was concerned. He washed her all over and saw just what the extent of her self-harm was. The scars on her arms were just the tip of the iceberg. She had the two piercings in her face and one in her labia, a tattoo on the back of her left shoulder that he knew wasn't there a year ago and bruises on her body where they had coupled so violently. He was afraid for a moment at the extent of it, but her words remained to soothe his fears as he shut the water off and dried her with a towel. She was wasted and thin, and when he lifted her again he felt just how thin she had become. She weighed perhaps a hundred pounds and she was like a sack of bones in his arms. He carried her to the bedroom and laid her in the bed but as he was about to step away she caught his arm and opened her eyes a little.

"Lay with me... please?" She asked and he slipped into the bed with her, pulling the sheets over them both. She curled in against him and he held her close as they both drifted to sleep. It wasn't a strong beginning; they both had scars, some seen and some invisible and they both had issues to deal with.

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As they slept a silent form watched from the doorway. Slim and feminine, it was like the shadow of a reflection, like a bare wisp of fog still shaded from the sunlight. In that wisp there was the swirl of a white skirt, the flash of pale skin and a hint of red hair. It stood in the shadows of the doorway looking in at the sleeping pair and the hint of a smile turned up the corner of a mouth. Another dim shape appeared, like a smaller version of the first and Bobbi's shade looked down at the shade of her daughter and they smiled at each other. A third tiny shape was held in her arms, small but there as she held her unborn child in death as she never got to in life. Bobbi had been like the first breath of summer when she was alive and now, as she faded to be at rest the day turned to evening and the evening turned night. The two she had loved the most in her life had found the solace they needed in each other. A breeze unfelt by either of those sleeping stirred the room, making the curtains rustle and teasing Dan and Karen's hair and when the impossible breeze settled to stillness the three shadows were gone.

THE END