LOCI Fic: Till I Am Myself Again, ch. 9/?
TILL I AM MYSELF AGAIN, Chapter 9/?
Please see Prologue for disclaimers.
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She’s back in the basement, hanging by her wrists, choking on her gag, tasting tears and blood and bitter helplessness…and the worst thing about it is that it feels so familiar. Even in the dream, she knows it’s happened before, and that time she was lucky enough and strong enough to survive - but now, incomprehensibly, she’s back in that horrible place and nobody gets two such narrow escapes…which means, oh god, she’ll never get out, she’ll die like the woman on the other side of the curtain, sobbing and begging for the pain to end…
No. NO.
Clutching at hot, stubborn rage like a lifeline, she tears herself free of the nightmare and sits up with a jerk, sweating and gasping for breath.
“Alex?” Beside her, Bobby pushes himself up on his elbows. “What’s wrong - are you…”
Oh God. Did I scream or something?
Even as he reaches out to her, she recoils uncontrollably, fighting residual terror and the embarrassment that floods through her in its wake. She tries to swing her legs around and get out of bed, but her feet tangle in the sheets and she trips, landing hard on her knees.
“Shit!”
She pounds her clenched fist once into the floor, unable to keep hot tears of pain and mortification from starting in her eyes.
“Shit, shit, shit.”
Her heart is still thudding in her ears, sparks dancing in front of her eyelids like they did when she was blindfolded…no, shut up, she tells her brain angrily. She pulls her knees up to her chest and holds on tight, so tight that her arms ache - and that’s another reminder she really doesn’t need right now. Damn it, stop. I am not doing this anymore. I’m not.
Distantly she registers Bobby turning on a light and sliding down to join her on the floor. He puts a careful hand on her back. Again, before she can stop herself, she pulls away from his touch.
“Don’t. I’m - just give me a minute. I’ll be fine.”
Which is a lie, and they both know it, even before her voice cracks humiliatingly on the word fine. Bobby stiffens and withdraws his hand.
“Alex,” he starts, sounding frustrated. “Let me…”
But she can’t move. All she can hear is her own breathing, rapid and harsh. She presses her forehead to her knees. Just when things were finally getting better, it fucking figures… say something to him, damn it. But she doesn’t have the first clue where to begin, and a hard, miserable silence stretches between them. Finally Bobby speaks, and she can hear the effort he’s making to keep his voice level.
“So…everything you’ve been saying about how we need to be more open…that only applies when it’s me spilling my guts to you?”
He’s right, she thinks wretchedly. God, I’m the worst kind of hypocrite right now…what the hell is my problem? Bobby sighs.
“I know you’re usually the strong one…and really, why would you expect me to be able to…you know exactly how fucked up I am, after all…”
The bitter, helpless note in his voice makes her throat ache. Then she feels him move restlessly beside her, and for a second she hopes he’s going to try again to comfort her - I won’t pull away this time, she promises herself and him, inwardly - but air rushes between them. He’s standing up, going back to bed. Giving her the space he thinks she wants.
I can’t stand this. The hurt in his voice, the silence between them, the sheer loneliness of it… She takes a deep, gasping breath to say wait, stop - but fear and guilt are a dull weight on her chest, and she can’t get words out.
I might as well still be gagged and blindfolded.
The thought emerges out of the turmoil in her mind with unexpected clarity, and everything in her revolts against it. No. Not anymore. So she does the only thing that’s left: she conjures up the nightmare again, lets the terror and pain and humiliation surge up inside her unchecked. Fuck you, she tells the memory of Jo Gage. Take your best shot...here I am, wide open…
A deep, racking sob claws its way out of her throat, and then another. She feels Bobby’s hand on her wrist, gently loosening her death grip around her knees. Then his other arm comes around her, and in the end, it’s such a short way to fall, to let herself lean into him.
She can count on the fingers of one hand the times in her adult life that she’s cried this hard and this long. The night after the first time she’d shot and killed a perp, during her stint in Vice - then it was Rory, holding her. Again not even six months later, when Rory was killed. Maybe twice in the years that followed. Once a few days after Owen was born. But not since then - not when they broke her out of the basement, not after any of the other nightmares since, and not in therapy. She’s come close, so close, many times recently - but she hasn’t just… let go like this, not entirely. She can’t really remember, now, why it seemed so important not to.
Bobby doesn’t say a word; he just holds on as she comes apart in his arms. Holding the pieces together, she thinks incoherently. Still crying, she straightens up far enough to look him in the eye.
“I need you,” she says brokenly, urgently. “Just as much as you need me. God, Bobby, it kills me that you think - that you don’t know…”
She feels her face crumple again, and the rest of the sentence gets lost in another gulping sob, muffled in his shoulder. Bobby tightens his arms around her and presses his mouth hard to the top of her head.
“Shh. Come on, don’t…you’re supposed to be crying about all the crap that you’ve been through - not about me and my crap.”
That makes her chuckle through her tears, a little hysterically.
“If I’m going to c-cry, I’ll cry about whatever the hell I want,” she mutters. “Besides… it’s all mixed up together anyway.”
She pushes her face into his neck, rubbing her tears away on the rough stubble there, feeling the pulse in his throat beat against her cheek as her shudders start to subside.
After a minute Bobby shifts a little, and abruptly she realizes that they’re still sitting on the floor.
“Oh - sorry,” she stumbles, hot with embarrassment all over again. “We can - let’s go back to bed.”
“It’s okay,” Bobby says as she pulls away and stands up, slowly, stiffly. She can’t look at him, but as they get back into bed she can feel him watching her, radiating worry and sympathy. When she flops onto her back, he turns on his side towards her and reaches out to rest his hand on her stomach.
“How about…we start over?” he offers tentatively.
“What, with me screaming and falling out of bed?”
He snorts. “You didn’t scream before. And no, I meant - maybe you could tell me about your nightmare. Please?”
She swipes a hand over her face and pinches the bridge of her nose, staring blindly up at the ceiling.
“It was the same as always,” she mutters at last. Her throat is sore, her nose still clogged from crying. “Back in the basement, t-tied up, trying to escape…nothing new, just…worse than I’ve had in weeks. I thought I was getting past this. Getting over it.”
Frustration surges through her again.
“It feels - like a step back.” Like a failure. She twists the sheet between her fingers.
“That’s how I feel in the dream too. Like I’m caught in the rewind loop from hell. I always - know I’ve been through it before, and I just can’t understand how it can all be happening again. How I can possibly have let myself get into that situation again.”
Bobby takes a breath, but she cuts him off.
“And don’t say that it wasn’t my fault the first time. I know it wasn’t. That’s just how it feels.”
When he doesn’t reply immediately, she turns her head to look at him, and finds him gazing at her, lips pressed tight together.
“What?”
“I’m - well, that’s pretty much exactly how I feel. About all of it,” he says carefully.
She stares at him, remembering all the times lately that she’s snapped at him to stop blaming himself, stop feeling so guilty. After a long second, she sighs, her eyes falling shut.
“Touché.”
The bed moves as he shifts towards her, and then she feels his fingers threading gently through her hair.
“I wasn’t - trying to score a point. I just wanted you to understand…”
“I know.”
Inwardly she steps down hard on the beginnings of resentment, realizing how unusual it is for him to…push back at her about anything to do with their relationship. When it comes to us, he almost always lets me lead, she thinks. Maybe I’ve gotten a little too used to that, for all I talk so much about equal footing. She takes a deep breath and, eyes still closed, moves her head closer to his hand.
“You can have all the points you want, though, if you keep doing that…”
He chuckles, a surprised, pleased sound that goes straight to her heart, and suddenly it’s easy to roll the rest of the way into his arms. She fits herself against his side and presses her cheek to his chest.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I think…I think part of why I’ve been getting so mad at you when you blame yourself for everything…is that I’m doing the same thing - blaming myself, I mean - and I hate it. I hate that what happened has that power over me, that it makes me second-guess myself.”
He lets out a long breath, as though he’s waited a long time to hear this from her. She swallows hard and continues determinedly.
“And…you were right, before. About me being the strong one…I’m - used to that role. And…I guess I do like it, maybe more than I should… But I don’t - I never want you to think that it’s a - a one-way street between us.”
She sighs. “I suck at coming out and asking for help…and Dr. Nahdi agrees with you, by the way, that I need to work on…”
“Hey,” Bobby cuts in, his arm tightening around her. “Wait. Just so we’re clear - I love how strong you are. I would never want you to change that.”
She’s frozen, rendered speechless by the quiet certainty in his voice and the fact that he said love.
“It’s just…nice to be needed sometimes, too. You know?”
She squeezes her eyes shut, then opens them again and pushes herself up on one elbow to look at him.
“Yeah. And you are…you are. In more ways than I can count.”
“Okay,” Bobby says softly. “Thank you. It…helps to hear you say so.”
She lets her head fall to his chest, and he goes back to stroking her hair, fingers moving slowly over her scalp, tracing the curve of her ear and the line of her neck. She shivers and burrows closer, wrapping an arm around his waist.
“Listen,” he says after a minute. “I know you know this, but - recovery isn’t a straight line. Tonight, your dream…it’s not a sign of regression. It’s normal.”
She sighs. “I guess. I just want to be done with the whole stupid process.”
“Mmm. Is that why you went back to work so soon?”
His neutral tone makes her roll her eyes. “Too soon, right? You can say it. I know that’s what you thought…you and Ross and everyone.”
Her accusation loses whatever small impact it might have had when it’s overtaken by a huge yawn.
“Maybe you were right, though,” she admits sleepily. “Maybe I did rush back too quickly…for both of us.”
“Both…what d’you mean?”
“Ray Wiszneski.” She feels him tense beneath her, and spreads her hand on his stomach.
Do I really want to get into this now? she wonders. But she’s feeling warm and safe and drowsy, and compared to talking about her nightmares, the memory of Wiszneski seems…not easy, never that - but…less of a minefield than it might have been a few weeks ago.
“I thought I was fine to work - but I wasn’t recovered enough to have a gun pointed at me. Or you. And you definitely weren’t ready to see me in danger.”
“I’m never going to be ready for that.”
“You know what I mean.”
He sighs. “Yeah. It wasn’t - my finest moment as a hostage negotiator. Afterwards - I kept thinking... if - if I hadn’t been so - so afraid, and then so relieved when he surrendered…I might have remembered his history. Realized what he was planning.”
She turns her face into his chest, presses a kiss through his shirt. “Proof that I heard you earlier - I won’t tell you to stop thinking that way.”
She’s rewarded with a small, amused snort. “I appreciate it.”
There’s a small silence. She traces small, random patterns on his stomach until he covers her hand with his, thumb rubbing over her knuckles. After a minute he reaches over to turn off the bedside lamp, and then pulls her close again. She wraps herself around him, feeling exhaustion falling over her like a soft, heavy blanket.
“I’m worried about going back to work,” she hears herself say, on the edge of sleep. “The next time things go sideways…afraid I’ll freeze.”
I can’t believe I just said that, she thinks with a strange detached sort of wonder.
“Me too,” says Bobby equally softly. “For myself, I mean, not you. I know you’ll be fine.”
How do you know? But she guesses she’ll have to trust that, in this, he knows her strength better than she does. And vice versa.
“Anyway, we can’t not go back,” he continues slowly. “So… we’ll just have to get through it. Do the best we can.”
“As long as it’s we…us…together,” she mumbles. “Doing it. Working, I mean. And all the other stuff.”
“That’s very poetic, Alex.” She can hear him smiling.
“Mmph. Whatever. You know what I mean.”
*******
lose our grip and we fall
trying to climb over this wall
made of anger and guilt
a high barrier we built
place your foot on my back
it may be the height you lack
if you make it outside, would you come back
be my guide
-- Lennie Gallant, “Lifeline”
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TBC in Chapter 10...