Winner Round 12
Title: Broken
By: Emma
Disclaimer: I don’t own Roswell or its characters. I’m just borrowing them for fictional purposes. No infringements intended.
Rating: ADULT
Category: CC, M/L but it will make references to UC pairings
Authors Note: All events up until Graduation are relevant. This fic will be told from various points of view which I will list.
Summery: The gang has been on the run for three years and things have changed. Will Max Evans’s healing hands be able to once again save the love of his life?
1.
Claudia POV
“Good morning Claudia.”
I did my best to smile at Dr Lois Ray, the women I had been seeing for the past six months. But today was a bad day for me and I was struggling to find enough energy to sit upright in the seat across from her.
“Morning” I responded huskily.
“How are you feeling today?” she asked with a frown. Her eyes were clearly examining my pasty experience.
“Not so good” I replied.
I hear her sigh and I close my eyes. I had prayed for weeks that she would have something valuable to tell me today. An answer to the plaguing questions of my failing health. I knew from that one sigh she didn’t.
“What’s the verdict?” I ask.
“I’m afraid the latest tests turned up nothing, Claudia”
For the past twelve months, my health had been fading slowly. At first, it was headaches which eventually turned into chronic fatigue. Now my weight was failing and a lot of mornings I struggled to even get out of bed. I played my symptoms off for a long time, I kept telling myself it was stress or that I was just trying to recover from the last three years which to put simply, had been hell on earth. But eventually I had been unable to deny it any longer. I was sick and today I finally accepted that I was going to die.
“I’m afraid I’m at a bit of a loss” she sighed. “I have consulted with a friend in New York and if you’re willing she would like to look over your case, maybe run a few more tests”
“No” I whispered.
“The good thing is right now this isn’t untreatable,” she said ignoring my whisper, or maybe not hearing it. “You don’t have cancer or something terminal so we can keep fighting your symptoms”
There weren’t really any symptoms to fight I wanted to remind her but instead I simply stayed quiet.
“Thank you Doctor but no,” I said this time raising my voice a little louder.
“Claudia….”
“You’re not going to find out what’s wrong with me,” I said then. It had been playing in the back of my mind for months now. The more test results that came back negative the more the thought grew. She wouldn’t find what’s wrong with me because there wasn’t anything to find.
I had two options now. I could return to the house I had called home for the past 12 months, which had never felt like home, and spend the rest of my days there making peace with my past and my anger at the world, or I could call the one person I swore I would never speak to again.
“Thank you for everything Doctor” I whisper as I stand up.
“Claudia I wish you would reconsider” Lois says.
“If I change my mind I know where to find you” I smile kindly.
“Good luck” Claudia she says as she follows me to the door.
“Thank you” I say.
I hold my head up high as I make my way out of her office and into the dimly lit corridor of the hospital. I found it harder to keep myself upright with each step and I vaguely remember seeing the light from the outside as I made my way slowly down hall.
“Claudia!”
I pause as I hear my name and start to turn slowly.
My eyes blur and I can’t make out the person calling out to me.
“Claudia Whitman!”
His blue eyes become clearer then, his goofy smile bright as usual, as he approaches me.
“Alex!” I whisper.
“Everything is going to be okay Claudia” I hear him say and I frown in confusion.
“Alex it’s me” I whisper reaching out to grab hold of him, or to anything.
Why is he calling me that?
“Claudia, look at me” I hear but the sound is getting weaker and Alex’s image is fading slowly.
“Alex” I gasp and reach out to him again but my hands pass right through him.
***
“I think she’s waking up”
I don’t recognise the voice as I slowly open my eyes. I can hear beeping all around me and I try as hard as I can to open my eyes but they feel so heavy.
“Claudia can you hear me?” a male voice asks.
The voice is familiar, comforting in some ways.
“Alex” I whisper.
“Who’s Alex?” I hear the voice ask.
“We’re not sure. She was calling out to him yesterday before she passed out. Dr Ray thinks she might be hallucinating” another voice answers.
I feel a hand squeeze my own and I try to open my eyes again.
This time I manage and when I look around all I can see is white. I’m startled for a second as a distant memory of being frightened of white walls passes over me, but it’s gone as soon as it came.
“Claudia sweetie” I hear again and I turn my head in the direction of the voice.
He’s smiling at me and I remember.
“Eric” I whisper.
“Yeah I’m here,” he says.
I nod slowly and close my eyes again. He’ll still be there when I wake up next time. He always is.
***
“How are you feeling?” he asks as he stands in the doorway of my room.
I offer him a small smile hoping it might appease him. “Better” I lie.
I spent a week in hospital. Apparently, I slept for three days. They aren’t sure why I passed out, Dr Ray couldn’t find anything wrong with me. Her orders are bed rest and to eat. That’s easier said than done.
“Why aren’t you at work?” I ask.
“I’m working from home until you start to feel better,” he said walking into the room and sitting in the chair placed next to my bed.
“Eric…” I start.
I’ve been sick the entire time that I’ve know Eric Johnson.
I met him a little over 12 months ago when I was working at a diner. He came in one day for coffee and I served him. He ended up staying for coffee and lunch spending the whole time flirting with me. I resisted his charms for a long time. I knew his kind from years of working in diners. He was rich and cocky and he thought he could have me by simply flashing me his baby blues. I always hated his eyes, which is probably why I never meet them.
I wasn’t looking for another man. The one in my life was more than enough but he persisted. He stated coming into the diner everyday and one day he caught me in a moment of weakness.
I still don’t’ remember the details of how I ended up in the passenger side of his flashy BMW. He held me as I cried for hours and then I allowed him to peel the salmon pink uniform from my body and touch me in a way that very few men had before.
When he dropped me back at the diner I immediately went to the bathroom and was sick but for some reason I met him every day for the next week and I let him fuck me. One time it was in the dirty toilet of the diner, another in the back of his car.
It didn’t matter by that stage. I had turned to him because my marriage was falling apart, but in the end, I had put the final nail in its coffin.
Eventually he convinced me to move in with him. He had a five bedroom house a couple of suburbs over.
I had nowhere else to go so I accepted. My plan was to stay a few days, a few weeks tops until I got enough money to flee. But after a few weeks, I began to grow weak. Eventually I worked less and less and Eric began to control more and more of my life.
“I contacted some of the best Doctors in the Country. We’ll find out what’s wrong,” he told me.
“No” I shook my head. “No Doctors” I said.
He stood up and I could tell he was frustrated. I hid my sickness from him for months. Allowed him to simply believe that I was a weak woman he could control. It was easy to hide that way. I stayed inside the house most of the time. That was the way we both liked it and no one could discover the lies of my past. A past I wouldn’t share with Eric.
“I’ve allowed you to manage your health this long because I simply hoped it was a passing thing. I actually hoped you might be pregnant,” he said.
I resisted the urge to snort at him.
“But your not getting better and your obviously not pregnant’ he continued. “ I feel its time for me to step in. You have no choice in this any longer. We’ll fly to New York as soon as you’re feeling a bit better,” he said pointedly making me feel as though I was five rather than 22.
I looked away then gazing out the window. This was only the tip of the ice berg for Eric. If I had known what I did now I would have asked one of the other girls in the diner to serve him coffee.
These days I’m barely allowed out of the house. I’m allowed out to go shopping once a month but I’m escorted by a driver who is organised and paid for my Eric. Basically a watch dog.
I don’t hear him leave but I know he’s gone.
I know I can’t go to New York. They might find something that none of the others has been able to and that’s a risk I can’t take.
I glance at the clock and see that it’s almost nine. With the time difference across the US, it could be later or earlier in most states but I decide to take my chances. I lay back on my pillows and I close my eyes.
I clear my mind and I call out then hoping beyond hope that I might be heard.
