Two Punks In Love

PTSD

Author's Note: I know so many have been waiting for the continuation of this story. I've been stalled, because I couldn't bring myself to write this scene. Trigger warning: it's  a violent  scene, but I think it's true to Trace's history of trauma . A necessary dark moment of the soul to finally bring him face to face with the demons he's been ducking for years.

Trace

The way Kat says my name stops me in my tracks.

It's not a distraction technique to divert my attention. It's not an angry yell because I'm acting like a hothead.

It's born from a place beyond her vocal cords, beyond her exasperation, beyond her reason, beyond her fear.

She wails my name like...a petition. Like she fucking needs me.

I've heard her say my name hundreds of thousands of times in countless ways. Like she wants me. Warns me. Claims me. Denies me. Hates me. Loves me. Knows me.

Needs me?

Never.

All this analysis requires a mere fraction of a millisecond. I whip around, but it's too late.

Before I can react, her moment of need had passed and my moment of failure has happened.

She's falling, and I'm not there to catch her.

My eyes don't make a record of her fall. Apparently my brain requires sight to take three steps at a time, although I'm not sure it helps. I slip and slide and stumble down the upper flight, regain my footing on the landing and rounding the corner as I hear the dull thuds and gasps of my world fucking ending. I lose my own footing halfway down the lower flight, sliding feet forward to a stop by the unconscious form of everything I live for.

I have no idea how she tumbled, but she's landed face down, horizontal to the staircase, one booted foot still awkwardly caught upon the steps. My hands skim over her. I'm desperate to see her face, afraid to move her an inch.

She's breathing, thank God.

I say things. Petitions. Curses. Riley's name is if were a god to be invoked.

Over and over. I say things accompanied by every iteration of her name.

Please, Kitty. Kitty, Please.

Riley! Riley?

Jesus God. Help her. Kat. Please, baby...fuck.

Riley...Riley... for fuck's sake...do something!

Kat...oh god, Kat.

Can you hear me? Katheryn! Baby, say something!

Fuck! Kat! Goddamit!!!

Riley is like three people. Or three creatures. He grips my shoulder like a fucking tiger biting in, keeping me beside her, grounded where I need to be. He growls instructions into his phone. And he roars. In my mind he's roaring at Manning, until I realize he's not. He's roaring at the set medic to stay the fuck back, because he doesn't trust him to move her.

Not bloody fucking happening, you don't even have a fucking neck brace! Don't come a goddamn step closer!

She stays awkwardly face down, watered by my tears and peppered by my curses, breathing but otherwise still until the first responders arrive.

Riley has to pull me away as they work on her. As illogical as it seems, I'm possessed by the desire to fucking end these people touching her. Logically I know they are trying to help, but I'm terrified. What if the slightest jarring severs her spinal cord? Stops her breathing? Bursts an aneurysm the fall has brought to the brink?