APHONOUS

A/N: Okay so in case you haven't been following my Twitter, basically I've been doing finals. That and the original chapter 5 ended up being 30 pages and 16,000+ words. I thought it was a lot to take in at once and reading it all at once wouldn't put emphasis on moments that needed it. So instead you now get chapters 5,6,7,8,9 and 10. I know. I'm a machine. The good thing is the whole first draft to the story is done so you get updates while I work on Just-World. The bad thing is I sense everyone wanting a sequel because as my lovely SYuuri says "you're not good at resolution endings". And I'm not. I'm also known to crumble to mob demands when it comes to literature, so if enough of you ask for a sequel, I might do it.
That being said I dedicate these last chapters to the lovely SYuuri because they were semi-written with her wants in mind (and way pre-finale I might add). A little bit of what she wishes she could see with my deviancy weaved in makes for a great story, hence the 30 pages.
On to the technical business, the story changes quite frequently from here on out. I don't want to ruin it but basically there's a lot of chronological jumps (meaning cut scenes).
Lastly, thanks to everyone who reviewed/favorited/alerted and of course read. And thanks for your patience. I'll try to get a new chapter up every 3 days or so.

Aphonous

Chapter 5/10

Domestic Bliss

The room is blue. The light blue that radiates from behind the screens of old TVs long after they've been flicked off. No, it's maroon, the color of rich coffee, healthy earth and dried blood. Blinking lethargically the room solidifies as hunter green, the color of honeymoons zip lining by. The color of the army. Well, in Canada. Maybe in France too.

There are two windows off to the left; both have the blinds drawn, but they glow with the ethereal life of downtown. A monitor stands creating mountains out of her heartbeats. A beep repeats itself almost every second, what should be silence between is filled by a sibilant hiss.

This is when she notices she's not breathing for herself. Her lungs are paper bags, being inflated by some six-year-old bully who could choose to gather the trapped air and smash it against an open chubby palm. It's like those meditating moments when she realizes she's breathing and then can't let her breaths become a submissive action. She hates the feeling of this tube carjacking her mouth open, the roughness of it on her lips, the sound of it, the blue accordion mechanism that sighs as it fills her lungs.

Her head is immobile, her whole body is. It's heavy with sleep, with weakness, with pain. It's burdened with wires and tubes of all sizes. The feeding tube is back in the cavern of her right nostril, slithered back to where it was just excavated. There's at least six electrodes hidden somewhere on her body if there's a heart monitor. They're a pain too, sticky as hell and always leave little red round hickeys on her skin.

As the acoustics in her ears begin to clear, a faint mumbling can be heard over the mechanical wonderland set up around her bed. Her irises slide sideways to the right side of the room where Sam hunches over in a chair. His hands clasped at his bowed head and he's muttering something into his wrists. After a few seconds of his monologue, her ears pick up a few verses from a prayer and it's surprising. He's not a religious person. Neither of them are. Sunday mornings are spent lazing around in bed until ten or when one of them has the mentality to break the domestic bliss and start the day.

His elbows balance on his knees as he sort of rocks back and forth. She wants to get his attention, but his eyes are wrenched close like he's expecting to reopen them and not be in Oz anymore. He's less than a foot away, but she can't reach out and touch him. Her arm might as well be two tons of steel. The best effort results in a twitch of her right index finger. After a few more seconds of watching him she has to close her eyes. Is she really worth the prayer?

Her feet might have a better chance to garner his attention. A foot is larger, moves like a shark fin under the sheets. She detaches her right foot from where it's married to her left, the soles unionized. She doesn't bother trying to stand it on the heel; instead she drags it a few inches under the covers. The starch on the sheet and static cling of the wooly blanket cause friction and compose the lightest of sounds.

Really he should hear it. He can shoot people from kilometers away, smell C4, but can't hear his girlfriend trying to get him to notice her from inches away. She feels like she's been hit by a truck. There's solidity in her chest not caused by the foreign inflation. In one final attempt she spring loads her leg and then releases all the muscles to let out the smallest, weakest kick she's ever witnessed. Fetal kicks have more impact.

But Sam notices it. Head bobs up from his religious sabbatical. His facial features are slack. Eyebrows even. Eyes red, dark eclipsed and puffy as hell. Nostrils unflinching as they gulp in steady breathes. His lips remain pursed as his hands hover in the air. "Jules."

Her half or quarter drugged eyes must be what he was praying for because he laughs aloud. His eyes become crescents and he kisses her forehead while he smoothes out her hair. "God Jules, you had me so scared."

She can only watch him. A passive bystander in the life he's set up. She doesn't even know how she ended up like this. The last thing she remembers is Sam breaking the call button. She loves him, knows she does in the way his strong hand holds hers up. He kisses her palm, breath warm and comforting. "You've been out for three days. They tried to wake you up last night and it didn't take."

Oh so the prayer was for a summer revival. A little late in the season if she remembers her basic theology, but it seemingly worked. She twitches her hand towards her mouth and the giant abomination sticking out of it. She'd like that gone.

"You'll probably have to keep that for another day."

She wants to roll her eyes, but just doesn't have the energy.

"Your lungs were weak and your throat was swelling. They asked me for permission to put you in a coma and—"

And he did. She wants to sigh but can't. The most basic and trivial of sarcastic rhetorics are a delicacy to her now. She'll have to work out something with her eyebrows. However many days ago, she started using bits of the sign language she remembered from high school, but it pissed Sam off. He told her she'd speak again and learning to adapt was learning to give up in this situation.

"Jules, please." He's trapped her limp, cold, corpse of a hand between his two radiating ones. His top lip touches on her index finger and calmness surges through her. Something so normal evokes something so extraordinary. "Please don't be mad at me. I love you and I just wanted you to get better. I just, I couldn't lose you."

She closes her eyes for a moment, feels his thumbs caressing her knuckles and she wonders how she would feel if the situation was reversed. If Sam was in the hospital bed and she was the doting lover with a numb ass. She knows if the doctors didn't do everything in their power to save him, that she would hunt every single one of them down and make them suffer. Make it painful, make it last.

Her hand drunkenly stumbles through the air trying to touch his cheek. He understands, grasps her hand and holds it to the side of his face. It's warm, but sunken from the days withdrawn from sleep, or just armchair sleep. There's also an obscene amount of stubble and she crinkles her nose at it. He chuckles in response and kisses the tip of her thumb. A nonverbal resolution.


The transition is smooth, without turbulence. Without a word, a syllable, even a jostle from cob webbed vocal cords in the back of her throat that feel sticky and itchy. The apartment is very modern, very clean, gleaming even. And very white. All the walls are white, bedroom, bathroom, kitchen. It reminds her of the hospital. All she can think is how the hell are the walls supposed to stay this white?

As per Sam's new contract, the military set them up with a not too shabby one bedroom apartment in a building about fifteen minutes from the base. He's spending the year teaching fresh-faced French teens how to Sierra shoot someone. While she does shit all.

The first month is acceptable, maybe even borderline exhilarating. A new city and a new language she can't speak even if she wants to. The Hat didn't exactly have an abundance of French speaking Canadians and it was just easier to take the sign language option for a year which is so ironic it's almost sad. Sam speaks French fluently of course, which is why his dad was able to secure the position for him.

Sam gets up at five in the morning and by the time he's out of the shower she's standing at the bathroom door ready to hand him a cup of coffee. She can't do much else, and God knows she doesn't want to be reduced to a single domesticated stereotype, but he still appears so tired. Gray bags piled on top of his cheekbones and premature wrinkles shadowing the rest of his face. Most days he comes home looking worse and she just holds him at the door, his breath hot in staccato puffs against the nape of her neck. She wonders what actually goes on at the base, knows he's still in basic training, training to be a trainer, and she doesn't want to interfere. Has a feeling that she's his oasis.

The lack of a vocal structure hinders her from doing a lot of things when Sam's not home. She can't go shopping. She did at first, but one day the clerk kept asking her questions. Questions she couldn't answer. Questions in French. It's not like she could make a cutting or strangling motion to her throat, people might construe it as threatening. Might think she's choking.

So she and Sam go together. Walk once a week, usually Tuesdays, to the little grocery store a few streets over. He still tries to zoom by the vegetables, she has to drag him back with both hands and pull out vegetables high in vitamins. Then find creative ways to hide them in his food to make sure the big idiot eats right.

The streets are cobblestoned and built cozy close together. Houses and buildings loom over thin streets and when it rains, the water veins between the ancient stones, trickles downhill and into the river. The city is nothing like Toronto, paved and cemented shut. It rains a lot more, and she leaves the windows open to the placating sound. Rain on the roof, wind in the leaves, water on the beach.

During the days she uses her cell phone to send Sam uplifting messages. She's not good at texting or technology, but she needs to get used to it. Or learn to speak again. She uses his laptop while he's at work. Has searched it top to bottom for porn and found none, not that she could bitch him out for it, she was in the hospital for over a month. She sends an email to update the Team on their new France lives. Sarge writes back within the hour and she wonders what the hell time it is in Toronto.

She waits impatiently for the nights. Cooking supper for an exhausted Sam who talks to her about everything, anything to fill her speechless void. Just sitting next to him on the couch while he frantically searches to find if there's a TV channel broadcasting Canadian hockey. Her foot knocking the remote in his hand every few seconds until he growls her name in a warning.

The luxury of being able to sleep next to him. After weeks of being separated by injuries, tubes, wires and one particularly overprotective nurse, she can finally just lie down with him at night. Fall asleep with his arms ensconcing her, body warm, fingers brushing her skin with a feather light texture mollifying her constantly worrying mind.

He whispers things to her as they fall asleep. Anecdotes about his childhood and his father's cruelty, his mother's crushed spirit, his other sister's addiction problems. Stories that if they were in Toronto would still need another year or two to gestate before he spoke them. But here he lies facing her, hand brushing through her hair, dancing over her cheek as he regales her with stories of his army upbringing to bridge the communication defect between them.


At three months in she actually thinks time has stopped because the sky stays the same cotton white during the day and night, swollen with an impending snowfall. She doesn't want to complain to Sam, who's starting to enjoy his job. His probationary period is ending, which means a little increase in pay, but they still decide to have a modest Christmas.

Everything about the Christmas is modest. The tree they buy is fake, plastic and the size of a garbage can because there's no use in investing in something when in nine months they're going back to Canada. She's adamant about it. She wants her house back from Natalie, who was sideswiped when Sam suddenly told his sister he'd sold his apartment. Feeling sorry and slightly responsible, she communicated to Nat that her house was open, but she needed to keep the place up. And not move any of the furniture. Or wreck the floors. Or paint the walls. Sam still doesn't know how he ended up with a purple guest room.

She didn't cook much on Christmas. She's furious with peering out the same stupid window above the sink as hands robotically wash dishes and her body, like her throat, doesn't feel a thing. As a concession, she and Sam also agree not to buy each other gifts. Between paying the mortgage on her house back home and trying to stay afloat here during his probationary pay period, money is too tight for gifts.

But she buys him something anyway. Because fuck it, it's Christmastime and they've had a ridiculously stupid year climaxing at her chemical inhalation and somehow they ended up in France and it's weird. She needs to convey emotions she can't speak to Sam, and it's a way to ground her in this backwards, cheese loving culture. So one day when he's at work, she actually leaves the house for something other than a brisk walk. She goes to a small store and buys yarn. White yarn, fatter and softer than the kind he bought before. She also splurges for new knitting needles because to this day, neither of them knows where her old ones went. She wishes the panda slippers went with them.

On Christmas Eve they sit on a rented couch in front of their knee-high Christmas tree drinking really awful watered-down beer. She balances her beer bottle on his thigh as her temple rests against the side of his chin. His arm circles her body to cup her knee. He gives it a weak shake and with a sigh expresses, "This is weird right?"

She nods. It is weird. It's the first Christmas they've really spent together. Last year Sam went back to B.C. with Natalie to see his parents and she spent it alone. It sounds tragic, but Christmases usually end up more tragic when she spends them with someone, especially family. Now suddenly they're living on the other side of the world together, she's completely cut off from the only other family she knew and it's starting to get serious. If she actually realized how serious it was before this point, she might have run.

Before they go to bed, she twitches her nose at the sink full of dishes. Not at the task at hand, but at the stupid fucking window that reminds her of the windows in the hospital. Windows in a psychiatric ward. Windows in a prison. Sam approaches her from behind and wraps and arm around her shoulders pulling her back towards him. Pressing a kiss into her hair, he laughs, "I'll do them tonight."

These are the times she's sure it's true love. He doesn't know why she doesn't want to do the dishes, only she doesn't want to them. Even if she had a voice, she's sure she wouldn't share her secret hatred of the window, but Sam would still volunteer to do the dishes. When he's done she sets a small wrapped gift on the table, white bag with golden tissue paper exploding from within.

"Jules." He shakes his head. "I thought we said no gifts."

She purses her lips and shrugs. He did the dishes, it's an even exchange.

She watches his expression elevate as he realizes what the gift is. The way his eyes light up when he holds the stupid hat in his hands. She honestly tried to make it as ugly as she could, because now she has a feeling that he'll ask her to knit other things using the same method. Ask for mittens and then not wear anything on his hands all winter. Then a sweater and just waltz around topless.

The hat is white with two strings trailing down the sides almost reminiscent of early pilot gear. She also created this huge horrible pompom for the top. But Sam loves it. Laughs and immediately places it on his head like it's a crown. "You always know the right size."

She should, she's fallen asleep with that humongous head resting on her chest too many times to count in the last three months.

"How does it look?"

He looks ridiculous. If they were back at the SRU everyone would get a piece of him. She would even dig in and she made the damn thing. But his mood is so delighted, he's almost blissful. It makes the hat less ludicrous and her love him more. She pulls down on the side strings and kisses him.

"Hey," he mumbles against her lips, hat strings tickling her cheeks. "I have something for you too."

She pulls away slightly, staring at him with narrow eyes. Mr. No-Presents indeed. He reaches to the top shelf of the cupboard and she wonders silently why she didn't think to clean more. She could have found his gift. Maybe with a few days worth of plotting, figured out how to slyly un and rewrap it.

The paper is white with silvery glittering snowflakes on it and a small silver bow. "It's something I think we should do."

She really hopes he means cleaning the upper cabinets and her eyes twitches with a tad of anxiety. Inside is a Christmas tree ornament. A small glass angel holding a wreath. 'Year One' is engraved across the wings.

"I figured we could get one every Christmas."

She only nods, trying to keep the emotions from bursting out of her eyes and all over his beautiful gift. Her lower lip trembles and she sets the ornament on the table as she hugs him. Nine more months is tolerable. She can do nine more months.

He chuckles in her ear and apparently she's not catching on to something. When she examines his face again, he's wearing that stupid lopsided smile which means he's most likely going to do something to ruin this moment. "Did you notice the wreath?"

Of course she noticed the wreath. She's not an idiot. She doesn't nod, only so he won't gloat later on, but picks up the angel to investigate it once more. And that's when she really sees what the wreath is. A ring.

And she stares like an idiot because she wants to ask him so many questions that need to be verbal and not penned. Are you serious? Why now? Are you kidding me? You do not expect me to get married in France, do you? You're joking right? Her eyes bulge and dry with the pressure of not being able to ask. Not being able to properly answer.

"I know you hate it here Jules." And she fucking hates him because he's so goddamn calm. Like this is the most natural thing in the world. Like committing himself to her for an eternity is something he doesn't blink an eye at but he'll spend thirty fucking minutes picking out the right cut of meat. "But that's the thing with engagements; they can last a long time. They can last until you're ready."

She doesn't say anything because she can't. Even if she could, she's pretty sure she would be screaming at him right now in an only somewhat misplaced rage. For the first time she's glad she doesn't have a voice. Her hands start to sweat around the angel. The wings burrow and leave imprints on her skin.

"You don't have to answer now." He holds out his hand and with a little hesitancy she places the angel on his palm. There's an ache in her chest because it feels like he didn't give her enough time to decide.

"I just know I want to spend the rest of my life with you." His fingers deftly work against the ornament and he frees the ring. It's white gold with a single diamond resting in the middle. She remembers sitting in some fancy restaurant about six months ago when Sam started asking her about rings. What color she liked more. How her stomach hardened and the food on her fork splattered back onto her plate. She was terrified he might propose then. Suddenly it isn't so scary.

"I just don't think my life could get any better than you putting on this ring."


Next Chapter - The bipolar chapter.

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