14. Your character walking in on mine in the middle of a mental breakdown.
It wasn’t very often that Andrew still had nightmares about his brother’s murder. It’d been about a year, but his need for revenge had over taken his need to grieve. The desperation he’d felt after Simon had gone missing was un paralleled to anything he had felt.
Until Dominique had gone missing.
She’d already been brought back home, but the fear still gripped his heart, he still woke every morning worried that her coming home was a dream and he would wake to a nightmare.
His chest felt tight as he paced the room. Dom was late to meeting him and he was gripped with anxiety. Of course it was unlikely she had been kidnapped again, but these intrusive thoughts never took that into account.
A knock on the door startled him from his thoughts and he crossed the room in four big steps, opening the door and immediately wrapping his arms around her.
“Wha--Andrew?” It was hard to breath, and the only thing that could lessen the pain in his chest was making sure she was truly in front of him. “What’s wrong?”
It took a few moments for him to realize he was crying. His world was crashing down around him and for what? The mere thought that she was gone? Sobs seized his body and he pulled away, hands resting on her cheeks, fingers dancing over her cheekbones and her hair.
“I-I...I t-though yo-you...” Andrew couldn’t pull himself together, which felt like a first. He was the rock, the shoulder to cry on, but it had all been too much. “You...were g-gone again.”
“Oh, Andrew...” She wrapped her arms around his waist, and he looked over her shoulder, just watching his hands shaking. Trying to get them to stop, he placed them flat on her back and pulled her as close as he could, breathing her in. “I’m still here. I...I could never leave you.”
The hesitation in her voice worried him, but he focused on leveling his breathing. Andrew couldn’t lose another person to this world, especially not Dom. The short time she was at beauxbatons had been the worst of his life. On top of finding out about Simon, Dom hadn’t been there and he wasn’t sure how to react. So he didn’t. Now, everything was pushing in on him and he could feel his own limbs.
They both stood in the hallway, Dom’s hands wrapped tightly around his waist as if to remind him that he wasn’t alone--she was still alive. By the time the numbness had faded and he felt the tears drying on his cheeks, he pulled away, hands resting on either side of her face.
“Don’t leave again...please.” The words were desperate as he choked on them and he knew she could never promise something like that, but he asked anyways. A look crossed her face, but he couldn’t read it. For the first time, he didn’t know what she was thinking.
“Never,” she finally said, and the force gripping his heart released. “Not again.”