Broken- And Fixed Again- (A Jamilton Fanfic)

Chapter 4: To Kill A Mockingbird

//TW: physical, emotional, sexual abuse, victim-blaming and gaslighting, suicidal thoughts, self-hatred, self-harm, swearing\\

Thank you guys for all your advice and encouragement. Words cannot begin to describe how happy I felt while reading your comments. You guys are the best, and I don't deserve readers as great as you.

James

At this point, you hate me.

I get it. I fully understand. And you have every right to.

I don't need the world to understand what I've done. I don't hunger for the approval of the very people who despise my existence, like Thomas does. I do not need to. The only thing I need is my Thomas in my arms, the promise that I'll never have to fear the threat of frost seeping up my spine, slowing time and freezing everything I've ever loved once and for all. As long as I have the only person I've ever needed, who has ever understood me, I'll be happy.

He is the only cure to this ruthless disease spreading through my body whenever I am alone. He is the only ward against those dark thoughts whispering like echoes in the deepest recesses of my mind late at night when the rest of the city is sleeping, unaware of what hatred lingers in the hearts of its humans. Thomas is the only thing keeping me from spilling my life across the sand of some beach a universe away, and the fact that they wanted to take that away from me? The fact that they wanted to see me bleed? It filled me with a hatred unlike anything I've ever felt before, and can you really blame me?

How cruel could they be?

I do not need anybody else in the world on my side as long as I have my Thomas, the only thing which is rightfully mine.

I do not need your understanding.

But have you ever heard the story of Pavlov's Dog?

If not, I'll explain. So basically, a scientist who realized he had nothing better to do with his life conditioned his dog into getting hungry every time a bell would ring. He did this by, you guessed it, ringing a bell every time he filled the dog's food bowl up. Soon, the dog associated the bell with food. The bell is ringing? Food. Awesome. Wow. The scientist did this for months until one day, he rang a bell without filling up the food, and the dog began to salivate.

It's a basic principle, one of the more popular ideas of psychology. Simple enough to understand, I hope.

That is what I've basically done to Thomas.

All I want is for him to act the way I want him to. All I want is for him to be mine and to be happy with me and everything I can give him. If I have to hurt him to get him to understand that I love him more than I have ever loved anything, that he is the only thing I need to survive, then what does it matter? I'd gladly sacrifice entire worlds just to keep him as mine, just so I never have to know what it feels like to wake up alone, the world around me unusually and unfairly bleak even for this dreadful city.

What Thomas, and everyone else, for that matter, don't understand is that I'm doing this for his own good.

I'm doing this to protect him from the world that detested everything about him. I'm doing this to protect him from the man who disguised his selfishness for love, and unfairly offered Thomas promises he could never deliver on. He would hurt Thomas and leave, all the while proclaiming his innocence. And I'd be the one to pick up the pieces, just as I always was. The world would leave us behind, never once looking back as it forged on ahead, but so much the better.

He was the one who left me. I should be the angry one, I should be the one hungering for justice to finally come and correct things so they could return to the way they had been, so long ago. Things had been so perfect then, when I had only Thomas and he only had me. It was us against the world, and there was no way I'd rather have it.