Cracks, Glue, and Holding Together 2
Disclaimer: Smallville does not belong to me.
All he wants is to fix whatever it is that has gotten broken. That is what he does. It is how he has lived his entire life. You mend fences, you repair or replace the gone wrong part that is keeping the tractor from starting, and you patch the hole in the roof of the barn. He has been fixing things since he was a child, but he cannot seem to find a way to repair what has gone wrong with the most important person in his life. He hates it most when she goes quiet - not the comfortable quiet of the two of them sitting and soaking up each other's presence, but the quiet she goes more and more lately when he knows the silence is only silence because she is afraid of what she will say if she allows herself to speak. He does not know what it is exactly that she is refusing to voice, but he knows to what it pertains. Nearly everything said and unsaid between the two of them these days always comes back down to the same thing.
[(more)]
It is like watching water spiral around a drain. Everything in their lives is revolving around and being pulled toward this one central point, but what is really there is nothing - a nothing that is pulling everything else to fill the void, but the void does not fill. It stays a void. He understands wanting a child - it is what he wanted (what he wants), but what he wants more is for Martha to stop looking like she is being hollowed out inside by the obstacles in their path. If there is never a baby (or never even a placement of an older child), then he will still be okay. He is not so sure about her. He has never thought of his wife as fragile, but that is the thought that pushes itself forward with greater and greater frequency.
Sometimes, he catches her expression when she does not realize he is looking and the utter brokenness in her gaze cries out to everything in him that he needs to step up and make it right, but he cannot do that. This is something that he cannot fix, and that is a hard pill for him to swallow. He is watching her hurt and nothing he does makes it better. In fact, he is feeling increasingly like the more he tries, the more she is shutting him out of what she is feeling. What kind of a husband does that make him? What is he doing wrong? What is it about him that makes him . . . them not enough? They have been an us, but their them feels like it is slipping away even if neither one of them says the words out loud. He is losing her; she is losing herself. Where does that end? He does not think he wants to know.
He does not know whether to push the conversation when they climb into the truck after their visit to the flower shop. He wishes he had thought of some reason for her to not make the stop with him - being around Nell seems to get to her in a way that it never did before (and he saw the wistful expression that spread across her face as she talked to the little girl). He wants her to talk to him. He wants it to go back to them being an us versus whatever they need to face. He wants her to know that he can deal with anything so long as it is them together doing the dealing.
He thinks that maybe something has cracked when she brings up the topic herself, but there is not enough time to see where the conversation may lead before everything goes to pieces.
- - -
Everything happened so quickly that her perceptions of the events feel like a series of snapshots that burned themselves into her memory. It was just another day. She was going through the semi jealous turmoil that being around Nell always seemed to push her into these days (she knows she has exactly zero reason to be jealous of the other woman's affinity for her husband but rational does not always seem to be able to break through her impulses lately). The words slipped out of her almost before she realized they were coming (and maybe, just maybe something was unfurling inside her that would finally let her let him in on what she was thinking and not thinking again). It was a moment until it was not.
She does not try to pretend that they were not as close to dying as they were - there were plenty of people who had not made it through the day. She remembers thinking that she wishes she had not spent so many days cutting Jonathan out of what she was thinking rather than telling him how she was feeling - even when what it was was unfair or not at all what she had wanted to be feeling (especially when it was not at all what she wanted to be feeling). The two of them are an us - they are a them. Somewhere along the way she had started slipping away from that, and what she wanted most in that moment was to take that back. She remembers hoping that she would have a chance at making it better. Then, the truck had wrecked.
- - -
He has no idea how he managed to steer the truck as well as he did for as long as he did. There was not really much room for anything other than reacting, but he remembers thinking that he had to keep trying. Martha's safety depended on him making the right choices - that was the only thing that mattered in those moments. It is all a blur in his head when he tries to think about what happened - rocks and fire and the compulsion that if he just kept going then it had to end somewhere. It did end - not in a best case scenario but certainly not in the worst. Suddenly, their whole lives were split into a before and after - not based around the accident but because of the little boy that found them in the aftermath.
All he wants is to fix whatever it is that has gotten broken. That is what he does. It is how he has lived his entire life. You mend fences, you repair or replace the gone wrong part that is keeping the tractor from starting, and you patch the hole in the roof of the barn. He has been fixing things since he was a child, but he cannot seem to find a way to repair what has gone wrong with the most important person in his life. He hates it most when she goes quiet - not the comfortable quiet of the two of them sitting and soaking up each other's presence, but the quiet she goes more and more lately when he knows the silence is only silence because she is afraid of what she will say if she allows herself to speak. He does not know what it is exactly that she is refusing to voice, but he knows to what it pertains. Nearly everything said and unsaid between the two of them these days always comes back down to the same thing.
[(more)]
It is like watching water spiral around a drain. Everything in their lives is revolving around and being pulled toward this one central point, but what is really there is nothing - a nothing that is pulling everything else to fill the void, but the void does not fill. It stays a void. He understands wanting a child - it is what he wanted (what he wants), but what he wants more is for Martha to stop looking like she is being hollowed out inside by the obstacles in their path. If there is never a baby (or never even a placement of an older child), then he will still be okay. He is not so sure about her. He has never thought of his wife as fragile, but that is the thought that pushes itself forward with greater and greater frequency.
Sometimes, he catches her expression when she does not realize he is looking and the utter brokenness in her gaze cries out to everything in him that he needs to step up and make it right, but he cannot do that. This is something that he cannot fix, and that is a hard pill for him to swallow. He is watching her hurt and nothing he does makes it better. In fact, he is feeling increasingly like the more he tries, the more she is shutting him out of what she is feeling. What kind of a husband does that make him? What is he doing wrong? What is it about him that makes him . . . them not enough? They have been an us, but their them feels like it is slipping away even if neither one of them says the words out loud. He is losing her; she is losing herself. Where does that end? He does not think he wants to know.
He does not know whether to push the conversation when they climb into the truck after their visit to the flower shop. He wishes he had thought of some reason for her to not make the stop with him - being around Nell seems to get to her in a way that it never did before (and he saw the wistful expression that spread across her face as she talked to the little girl). He wants her to talk to him. He wants it to go back to them being an us versus whatever they need to face. He wants her to know that he can deal with anything so long as it is them together doing the dealing.
He thinks that maybe something has cracked when she brings up the topic herself, but there is not enough time to see where the conversation may lead before everything goes to pieces.
- - -
Everything happened so quickly that her perceptions of the events feel like a series of snapshots that burned themselves into her memory. It was just another day. She was going through the semi jealous turmoil that being around Nell always seemed to push her into these days (she knows she has exactly zero reason to be jealous of the other woman's affinity for her husband but rational does not always seem to be able to break through her impulses lately). The words slipped out of her almost before she realized they were coming (and maybe, just maybe something was unfurling inside her that would finally let her let him in on what she was thinking and not thinking again). It was a moment until it was not.
She does not try to pretend that they were not as close to dying as they were - there were plenty of people who had not made it through the day. She remembers thinking that she wishes she had not spent so many days cutting Jonathan out of what she was thinking rather than telling him how she was feeling - even when what it was was unfair or not at all what she had wanted to be feeling (especially when it was not at all what she wanted to be feeling). The two of them are an us - they are a them. Somewhere along the way she had started slipping away from that, and what she wanted most in that moment was to take that back. She remembers hoping that she would have a chance at making it better. Then, the truck had wrecked.
- - -
He has no idea how he managed to steer the truck as well as he did for as long as he did. There was not really much room for anything other than reacting, but he remembers thinking that he had to keep trying. Martha's safety depended on him making the right choices - that was the only thing that mattered in those moments. It is all a blur in his head when he tries to think about what happened - rocks and fire and the compulsion that if he just kept going then it had to end somewhere. It did end - not in a best case scenario but certainly not in the worst. Suddenly, their whole lives were split into a before and after - not based around the accident but because of the little boy that found them in the aftermath.