No Exit
By Fewthistle

Author's Note: Written for the Remainder/Missing Scene Challenge at the_pottingshed Community on Livejournal. Originally written for the even_angels_ Community. First and last lines by Flying_Peanuts.

Spoilers: Middle of Series Three, after the “last” breakup.

It was here I first saw you, behind these bars, drowning in the poison of your dreams.

It might have been easier if the prison that contained you had been as solid, as mundane as my own. I merely had to contend with locked cells, with guards and handcuffs, with high walls and bars of smudged steel, intractable, yet bendable. Breakable even, with the right amount of pressure.

Your bars, Helen, were flimsy things, in comparison, forged not with tempered metal, but with threads of doubt; with the brittle driftwood of all of your fears and insecurities; with the broken, twisted pieces of glass that once held a venomous brew, distilled from vats of middle-class morality, and the warped Calvinism of your youth.

Larkhall never held you. This grotesque Victorian vision of punishment and penance was never your prison. No, your barren chamber was never one of bricks and mortar, of steel and rusting iron. Your cell existed only within the confines of your mind, and heart. It took me so long to realize that I might never have the key, that my love, my belief in us might never pry open that indissoluble door.

As you walked away from me this last time, I knew that there would be no reprieve, no pardon, no stay of execution.

You were locked in a fear that soaked your face, your hands, your thoughts: I didn't even have time to love you.