Fic: TILL I AM MYSELF AGAIN, Ch. 4/?
TILL I AM MYSELF AGAIN, Chapter 4/?
Please see Prologue for disclaimers.
*****
“What are you going to do for your holiday?” asks Dr. Nahdi during their session on Saturday morning. Alex makes some true-but-innocuous answer - rest, spend time with family and friends, maybe get out of the city for a few days - but inside she’s thinking I’m going to finish getting better, damn it. I am, as my nieces would say, SO DONE with being traumatized.
She spends the next day with her mom and dad, poring over paint chips and fabric samples and furniture catalogues, and then she finally takes her brothers up on the generalized offer of help they’d made right after her kidnapping. Now no one can say I’m not letting my family be part of my recovery, she thinks, although it’s possible Dr. Nahdi didn’t mean she should recruit her relatives to help her redecorate. Whatever. They pile all the furniture and household items she wants to keep into Luke’s battered truck, and she calls a junk removal company for the rest - the dining room set and couch that came with the house, the terrible curtains and the paintings that Bobby was so gleefully scathing about when she first moved in…all of it goes to the Salvation Army.
I’d be doing this anyway, she rationalizes, even if Dr. Nahdi hadn’t said it might help with the flashbacks. It’s about time I made this place my own - it’s been almost a year since I moved in.
She has the whole place cleaned from top to bottom, and after that come the painters, a delivery of new furniture and finally a brand new, state-of-the-art alarm system, recommended and installed by a friend from the Academy who now works as director of security for the Museum of Natural History. Her credit card isn’t going to recover any time soon, but at the end of the week she stands in the front hallway, and takes what feels like the first deep, peaceful breath she’s been able to manage in that place since she came back from the hospital.
This was a good idea, she thinks with relief and satisfaction. It feels like home.
The walls are still pretty bare, but she decides she’ll ask Bobby to help her find some things to put up. It’ll be fun, negotiating him down from “art that makes you think” to art that she can live with, but that he still finds worthy of the name. It’ll be something…safe…we can talk about, she thinks wistfully. She’s surprised by just how much she likes the idea of there being something of him in her home, something more than just clothes in a drawer and his things in her bathroom.
The redecorating also gives her an excuse to stay with Jen and Mike for most of the week, sleeping in the spare bedroom that has officially been designated “Aunt Alex’s room.” Much as she hates to admit it, she still sleeps better when she’s not alone - and even after the nights that are interrupted by bad dreams, it’s hard not to wake up cheerful when her alarm clock is the sound of her nephew creeping “quietly” into her room every morning to check that she’s still there.
He’s been told not to bother her if she’s sleeping, so when she cracks an eye open, she knows she’ll find him standing by her pillow, his sleep-tousled head just clearing the top of the mattress, staring hopefully at her from five inches away. It makes her laugh, every time. She’s more grateful than she can express for his simple, uncomplicated presence - for the feeling of his small, strong arms around her neck and his hand in hers, his nonstop toddler babble and the way he laughs freely and delightedly when she grabs him and tickles him, just because she can’t see him without wanting to hold him. Not to mention the fact that he’s probably the only person in her life who isn’t worried about her, these days. It’s a relief, to say the least.
“How’s Bobby?” Jen asks on Wednesday evening. She’s chopping vegetables for stirfry, and Alex is sitting at the kitchen table with Owen in her lap, supervising the creation of a complex structure involving blocks, cars and an egg carton appropriated out of the recycling box. The process seems to involve apparently infinite rounds of building, demolishing and rebuilding, in which her main assignment is to keep the various bits and pieces from flying off the table.
Alex sighs, her breath ruffling Owen’s curly hair. How’s Bobby - now there’s a very good question.
“I…don’t really know.”
“Have you talked to him much since he went upstate?”
“He calls every night…but he doesn’t say much.” And the conversations almost invariably leave her feeling lonely and…incomplete, somehow, like an opportunity missed, but she’s never sure what she could have done to make things different.
“Any word on how his mother’s doing?”
“Not really. I ask, but he just says she’s doing as well as can be expected, or something equally non-specific, and then he changes the subject,” she says exasperatedly.
“Maybe he just doesn’t feel like getting into the details, if he’s just spent all day dealing with her medical problems,” Jen suggests.
“Yeah,” Alex says, unconvinced. That’s probably part of it, she thinks, but it’s not the whole story.
“He’s never talked much about his mother to me,” she says, “nothing beyond the bare minimum. And I’ve never pushed him on it. Hell, I only learned that she had lymphoma because he told a suspect so in an interview, last month.”
Off Jen’s slightly shocked look, Alex waves a hand.
“It was a bonding thing. He does it all the time, establishing a rapport by sharing what looks like personal information…he doesn’t usually tell the truth, or at least not the whole truth. This time, it just happened that the guy we were talking to - his wife was dying of cancer.”
And he killed his step-daughter because he thought she was making her mother’s illness worse. All in the name of love. God, what a travesty.
“Poor thing,” says Jen softly and it’s not clear whether she means the wife or the husband.
“Yeah,” Alex says, pushing away the memory of Ray Wiszneski with a determined effort. “I just wish he had told me directly - Bobby, I mean.”
Jen frowns at the carrot she’s peeling. “You just said you two don’t talk about his mom. Maybe he wanted you to know, but he didn’t know how to bring it up…so he took the opportunity when it came up in that interview - that was his way of telling you.”
“Mmm.”
Great. What kind of couple does that make us, if we have to interrogate a criminal to communicate important personal stuff to each other?
But she has to concede that it’s true, there’s no precedent in their relationship for any kind of real conversation about his mother. No instructions in the manual, she thinks tiredly. That’s got to change.
Jen chuckles suddenly.
“What?” Alex asks.
“It’s just - you complaining that he’s not telling you about something that’s bothering him…I mean, come on, Al. You’re the queen of I’m fine, stop asking…especially lately. Hello, pot? Meet kettle.”
Okay, okay. What’s your point? She rolls her eyes at her sister.
“Fine. So I’m getting a taste of my own medicine. Doesn’t mean it’s good for Bobby or me.”
“I know,” says Jen, serious again. “But - you’re driving up to join him in a few days, aren’t you? If he’s fine with you doing that, maybe that’s a sign that he’s ready to be more open about what’s going on.”
Yeah, if.
On Thursday night, she screws up her courage and, when he calls, she asks him point blank if he still wants her to drive up to Carmel. There’s a startled silence.
“Uh - yeah. Of course,” he says slowly. She sighs inwardly. Not exactly the ringing endorsement I was hoping for.
“Why - are you thinking you’d rather stay in the city?” he asks. “Because I would understand - your family…”
“No,” she says hastily, unwilling to give him an easy excuse. “No, I still want to come. I just…”
God, why is this so hard? She pinches the bridge of her nose, wishing they were having this conversation face to face so she could at least read his body language.
“I just can’t tell if you really want me there,” she finally says. “It seems like - maybe - you’d rather just keep dealing with…everything - your mom, her illness…on your own.”
Another silence, and she hears him sigh. “I - yes, that is what I’m used to. I don’t - want to burden you…”
“Don’t even go there,” she says sharply. “What do I always tell you, when you say that?”
Silence, and then, grudgingly:
“That it’s not a burden - that the burden is being shut out.”
“Right.”
She waits, listening to him take a breath to speak, and then stop - once, and then again. Her heart twists. This is hard for him, she thinks. Uncharted territory. Please, she pleads with him silently. Please don’t push me away.
“This is different,” he gets out at last. “I - my mother - she - it’s a lot to deal with, Eames. I don’t think you realize how much.”
“Maybe not,” she says slowly. “But why won’t you give me a chance, instead of just assuming I can’t handle it - or wouldn’t want to?”
“I don’t know how it would be, to…involve you. I don’t know - what would happen.”
“To us, do you mean?” she says baldly, deciding to ignore the several other ways he could have meant that. We are damn well going to talk about the elephant in the room...well, one of them, anyway.
He pushes out an angry breath. “Yes, all right? Among other things, that is what I meant. Given everything that’s been going on with us lately, can you blame me for not wanting to add something else to the mix?”
First indication that he’s aware things aren’t right between us. Thank God.
“No,” she says. “I understand - I do.” She takes a steadying breath. Ante up, Alex.
“It’s the same reason I stopped telling you about my nightmares or my sessions with Dr. Nahdi…it’s easier not to…and neither of us wants to add any more bad stuff to what the other is dealing with. But Bobby, it’s not a good thing, can’t you see that?”
She stops because her voice is shaking, all of a sudden, and she has to close her eyes tight against incipient tears.
“Alex - don’t,” Bobby says helplessly, sounding like he’s got something caught in his throat. “I - I do see. I know.”
It’s not much, but it’s something. She swallows hard and forges on.
“Maybe it is a terrible idea for me to come up to Carmel,” she says a little desperately. “I don’t know how we’ll deal with it. But - I miss you, Bobby. I’ve really missed you, and I don’t just mean this week…and I’m afraid of what will happen if we don’t do something.”
She lets out a long, trembling breath. I’m afraid, and I said so out loud. Dr. Nahdi would be so pleased, she thinks ruefully. Bobby isn’t saying anything, and she wishes suddenly and fiercely that she could reach through the phone lines and touch him, anchor herself with the movement of his chest rising and falling, the thud of his heart beating. The silence between them feels heavy, murky, a river so deep that she can’t see the bottom of it anymore, and she imagines the words she’s just spoken sinking like stones into darkness.
But then her partner clears his throat, and suddenly it’s a little easier to breathe.
“So am I,” he says with difficulty. “Afraid, I mean. And, I miss you too.”
Pause. Then, with emphasis, “I miss you like crazy.”
Miles away where he can’t see her, she holds tight to the phone and flushes red.
“I - I want you to come and join me,” he continues determinedly. “I don’t - I hope - we can figure the rest out when you get here. Okay?”
“Okay,” she says, limp with relief. Then,
“Like crazy, huh?” She thinks she might actually be grinning like an idiot - it’s been so long that she’s almost forgotten how it feels.
“Yeah.”
She can hear the answering smile in his voice, and it warms her all the way through.
“Me too,” she says softly. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
*****
TBC in Chapter Five…Together Again (finally!)