Pathos - A Duskwood Fanfiction

Chapter 5

She sank back down onto her knees again, kneeling on the unforgiving floorboards of her bedroom in an unconscious pose of supplication as her heart suddenly seemed to stop. A strangled gasp found its way to her lips as she felt it indeed pause, a sickening sensation of nothing happening in her chest, and then a thudding lurch as the action potentials in the cells fired again and returned to a normal rhythm.

Was it really him? She had never once heard his unadulterated voice, had never seen a visual representation of him beyond the faint outline of his head shrouded in a hood - nothing. She had fallen in love with a man whose only true physical presence she had ever seen was in the faces of his two sisters. And even that was potentially unlikely, as the DNA of physical features was always a Russian roulette, and statistically even more so considering that he did not share the same mother.

She found herself suspended in a strange sensation of limbo as she held the now silent phone to her ear, incapable of breathing as the most powerful emotions that she had ever experienced screamed like banshees in the middle of her chest.

And then, like an arrow thudding into her sternum, the voice came again, saying her name. The heaviness of it, the solemnity of it - she knew it was him and could be no-one else.

She had spent so many nights wondering what it would feel like to hear him say her name, and she could have almost laughed as she now knew that it felt like a projectile weapon. Not soft, not gentle, not rich, not sensual like she'd fantasized - no, it felt like what she imagined that waking up from CPR must feel like after drowning. Abrupt, jolting, painful, alive.

She'd imagined how their first conversation would go a million times over. She had anticipated joy, she had anticipated fear, she had anticipated bittersweet sadness. And it was indeed all of those things. But it never once occurred to her that it might also hurt.

"Are you alright?"

As he asked this question, she heard Alan's low voice in the background saying that he would be right back. Jake murmured a quiet "Thank you," and then said her name again questioningly, a slight edge of concern showing itself in his voice.

"Yes," she replied after a moment, feeling her heart racing and her chest hurting with...something. It felt like...pulling? What the fuck?

Jake was silent as the sound of a door opening and closing emerged from the background. Alan leaving, she thought, and closed her eyes as she listened to the soft tide of Jake's breathing into the mic. She could barely believe that any of this was actually happening - she had been longing to hear his voice and to hear him breathe and to exist for what felt like an age that to be finally experiencing it felt indescribably surreal.

"You..." Jake began, then stopped, his voice faltering for a moment before resuming more quietly than before as though he was suddenly uncertain if his next words would be welcomed. "...you have an incredibly beautiful voice."

Her eyes drifted closed as his words filled her senses like an opiate flooding into her veins, sending a warm and golden glow through every single one of her nerve endings. She was aware of a hitching in her own voice as she gave a helplessly delighted laugh in response, unable to do anything else. His nervousness had altered his voice somehow, because suddenly there was the gentleness and depth that she'd always imagined that it would have. It was a confession of vulnerability, the way that he had spoken, and it was also something else that she was a nanosecond away from putting a name to when he spoke again.

"I've always wanted to tell you that."

She laughed helplessly again, a breathless sort of gasp, and then found her voice as she rose a hand to her forehead in mortification as she remembered her first words to him.