The Scars Run So Deep

Confessions

'For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of our tasks; the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.' - Rainer Maria Rilke

I cried when I saw her through the glass and as she ran into my arms, the missing piece to my soul fell into place. Elena, the woman who through the weeks of everlasting sleep had haunted my dreams was here again. Her tears were running down onto my arm, her soft hair was falling around my face. She was here... Elena really was here in my arms, I could feel her, could smell the soapy smell of her skin... see her beautiful face. Holding her to me I finally felt at peace, in such a short time she had become everything to me, she was more important than the job I had got up and done every day for over a decade. I was prepared to walk away from everything I had ever known just to have a chance to love her every day.

If Elena was here though, that meant that Harry Pearce, the man I had put my very life in the hands of... had lied.

I watched him enter the room, his head bowed down and he was refusing to look at me as I stared at him. I was in shock, what could he possibly hope to achieve by keeping Elena from me? Surely, it wasn't to keep me at MI5 - didn't I deserve to have some happiness, some pleasure to make me feel alive in my life? Had I not done enough to be given the chance to be more than the man who had become a cog in the machine? I was trying to get the strength I still didn't have thanks to the weeks of being in the ruddy coma to hold her tight against me and push myself to see the man himself standing in the corner of my hospital room. He had some explaining to do, I had known there was something off with what he said... but see for myself that it was all lies was too much.

"You lied to me."

I watched him lift his head towards me and he had the face of a haunted man, whatever the reason for doing what he had to me, to us... had affected him deeply.

"I had no choice..."

"What, that's a load of shit and you know it! You had no choice, you knew how I felt about Elena before even I did, you warned me when we were in the safe house before we moved to Matfield. Yes Harry, I remember that day. You told me Elena was a beautiful, intelligent woman and I was to be careful. Now the question is, was I to be careful that I didn't fall for her because you were afraid I'd realise I was worth more? That I would be given the chance to be a man and not a machine..."

Harry was processing my words as I held the still crying Elena to me, tugging her gently to me I whispered for her to lie next to me. I needed to have her close to me and it seemed she felt the same way as she curled up against me on the small hospital bed.

"I don't think the nurses would..."

"Harry, I really don't give a damn what you think. The nurses as kind as they have no doubt been to me can get lost if they think I'm letting the woman I love leave my side. Yes, you heard right, I love Elena - but then again you knew that didn't you? I love Elena so much, and so deeply it's as if anyone else I met before was merely a shadow in comparison. She matches me in every way and makes me happier than I have ever dreamed possible.

So what gave you the right to decide whether she was in my life or not?"

Elena seemed, unsettled in my arms under Harry' gaze, dipping my head I kissed her for the first time in what felt years. The feel of her lips against mine was like fire, I could feel the need for her building within me, like a drug to my system I craved more.

"You love me?"

I looked into her eyes in amazement. How could she not know that I loved her, and had loved her for all the time we had been together? To confess such things as the story of the nutcracker to her, something so personal should have told her. Yet, in truth, circumstance had thrown us together, so bar the nights spent in our room at the house in Matfield we hadn't had chance to show each other how we felt. Then I felt the doubt fill me, maybe she was asking this as she was the one who didn't love me. I felt sick, and I knew it wasn't anything to do with the drugs they'd been filling my system with.