Take Me To Church || Valley!Verse 03
A transatlantic plane ride presented more than ample turbulence to ware through the last defenses of the woman who, at that point, felt more like a carefully situated construction of shards of glass than a human. Charlotte spent the majority of the trip intermittently forgetting to breathe, testing the elasticity of the gash on her palm until whatever had healed once again came undone, and avoiding the safety in the green hue of Daniel’s eyes. Each peripheral glance of the man’s profile she stole felt like fresh poison.
Stole. It was the only word that sat comfortably with Charlotte, and of course there was no one to blame but herself. Daniel definitely shouldn’t have been in the seat beside her. Each moment that the girl didn’t hold her shallow breath as the plane trembled or she squeezed her eyes shut and tightened her jaw against the pain of the pressure to stop the bleeding the palm of her hand again, was spent in a deep, furious meditative state. This exact situation, this heavy leaden weight in the pit of her stomach, the white hot pain lodged in her chest, this return of the basic human feeling of guilt… It was everything she had warned herself not to let back in. It was everything she’d purged herself of until Daniel somehow knocked down every hardened, fortress and defense she had with the grace and ease of a gentle summer storm.
This was never supposed to happen, and now she loved him so much it would probably kill them both.
Once the two were on steady ground again Charlotte hoped her nerves wouldn’t bite back at her so severely. Outside of the airplane’s cabin she found it harder than ever not to look at Daniel. Instead, she lagged behind him purposefully and stared between his shoulder blades as she followed him to a car. She slipped into the passenger’s seat without a word. She nearly managed to start the drive without incident, but when Daniel took his seat to her left a slight, unintentional movement of his arm sent the woman’s hands upward to protect her head as she turned her face sharply away from him. She waited for the blinding pain, the stomach-churning crunch as she connected with the car window, but they never came. Neither did the two fangs hungrily sinking into the gentles arc of the curve of her neck, but the ghost memory of Alexander burned against her flesh just as badly as if he’d been in the car with her.
Charlotte lowered her hands slowly. She hadn’t expected to feel quite so vulnerable on the ground, but it was time to face the reality that it would be much easier for her demons to catch up to the both of them now. There was no outrunning hell. She thought now, perhaps the worst time of all to finally understand the complexities of the playwrights and poets admired by the father, how apropos the quote of the French writer Sartre: Hell is other people. From years of experience it was frighteningly true. Alexander, Evangeline, Cameron, Roxanne, Jefferson, Charlotte…
“Alexander,” Charlotte explained, though perhaps even that single word was unnecessary to frame the explanation of her sudden, cowardly reaction to Daniel starting the ignition. She tried to sit back against the passenger seat, but she felt tense and rigid. The space between them felt like dead air, no music with subtexts had been prepared today in hopes the hunter would read into them, no more time left for the two of them to pretend their flirtation with Charlotte’s freedom would end in anything but a heavy price.
Charlotte knew better now. She had pictured herself back then a lion in sheep’s clothing. She was still the sheep, and the beast that held her reigns had been angered. Now she sat in the car with Daniel not emerging as her enigmatic self, but as the obvious sacrificial lamb. Daniel knew better now. He knew the truth of what Charlotte was now, too.
When the road out in front of the car became too blurry for Charlotte’s red-rimmed eyes to focus on, she finally looked at Daniel. It felt like days since she had held his face in her gaze. She insulted him by letting her stare linger. As she did, it felt as if someone had sunk their hands into her chest and pulled her ribcage apart until rib by rib her chest snapped open. She had never intended for loving him to feel like this. “What are you most afraid of?” she heard herself ask, or at least it had to have been her. The voice sounded miles away and as if it had swallowed broken glass and gravel.
