So you learn

by blushingartist

You learn that the nightmares can hide for a long, long time, but they always come back. You learn that they're still just as frightening as before. Abby-centric.

You learn that the nightmares can hide for a long, long time, but they always come back. You learn that they're still just as frightening as before, but this time you see Gibbs' frustration and tiredness after a long week as annoyance with your fear, with you, and so you learn to keep it to yourself when you wake up breathless. You learn to stay up later. You learn that putting up a mask is a lot easier than you thought it would be, frighteningly so, at least at first. You learn to get used to feeling sick all the time, whether it's from lack of sleep or too much caffeine to keep you from sleep, and you learn to like the empty feeling from not eating all day, learn to make convincing excuses for why you're suddenly keeping to yourself. You learn not to bother them with your own problems, because you can see their annoyance and you're really fine anyway and even if you weren't it's not like it would matter. You learn to get dressed in the dark so you don't have to look at all the empty spaces that you're too tired to fill.

You learn that it's easy enough to have others run evidence downstairs for you. You learn to associate him with that room, and start fearing them both, though it's not so much fear as numbness really. You learn to stay quiet when he visits your lab, learn to sound uninterested, learn to discourage him from visiting even if you can feel his hurt as you do so. You learn to stop pleading help with your eyes as he's leaving the room, and you learn to hear silence when he looks back, when he talks, when he whispers against your hair. You learn not to see how sad his eyes get when he lays a hand on your arm and you flinch away terrified, because you can't help it, because in the dreams it's always him standing over you with the scalpel, seeing just another body, and somewhere along the line you've forgotten the friend that existed outside of the dream. You learn to feel relieved when he finally does stop coming, because he's always been hardest to fool and you know you couldn't have kept hiding from him. You learn that it's too late to believe in fairie tales, even the ones reported on the six o'clock news. You learn to close your eyes and open them again, you learn to put down the phone without calling and you learn to get used to the phantom fear of a cold metal table and a scalpel poised above your chest. You learn to cover the circles under your eyes and the sharp bones of your ribs, learn to avoid both the basement and the kindhearted murmuring within it. You learn to pretend you don't miss him until you don't.

You learn that he hasn't learned, or forgotten, or won't, that he lets you avoid him but asks after you most days and still hopes. You learn that his eyes mostly look sad now, you learn that he watches you leave for lunch every Tuesday from the bench by the coffee cart, waiting for you to see him, waiting for you to say what he did wrong. You learn that he thinks he did something wrong, thinks you're angry at him and not scared of a metal table and a nightmare and yourself. You learn not to cry, or maybe that you can't. You learn to be steel when the boss looks at you long, when he knows that you're lying, when he stops asking if you're okay because he can't pretend it's the truth anymore, and anyway, he already knows. You learn that the team tiptoes around you, that they've become cautious of you and the stranger you seem to be, and you learn that you don't really care anymore, that you can't. You learn to wear layers and layers because you're always cold and really too thin, and you learn to get used to the constant panic eating at the edges of your consciousness. Or at least you try.

You learn that you're still alive when you collapse in your lab and wake up on a cold metal table, and he is there, and you scream and scream and you learn that he sees you, he sees you, there's no scalpel and he sees you, you're safe. You learn that you can still cry after all, and so you cry, months of cold and steel and numb in your heart as he holds you crushed close and whispers into your hair, and you learn that his eyes still look sad when you can't see them because you're buried into his chest, shaking and sobbing because you miss him and you miss you, even though you're both right there holding each other close. You try to unlearn his face as he looks at the hollows of your eyes and the bones jutting through your skin, but you can't.

When you won't speak, or eat, or stop shaking for hours, he and Gibbs carry you out and drive to the hospital, and he doesn't let go of your hand until after you feel a needle and you drift to sleep and it's the first time you remember not dreaming at all. When you finally wake you've been moved to a new room in a new ward, where the walls are all white and the bathroom door doesn't lock, and a nurse tries to talk with you, even tries to sign with you, but you can't. You see Gibbs standing outside the door, and his clothes are all rumbled and he doesn't have coffee and you wonder why he isn't working on the latest case, and then you're asleep again, because you finally learn that you're tired, so, so tired, you're drained and exhausted.

You slowly learn peace again. You learn that hospital time is different, and that a month can be nothing and everything and you still won't talk, but you pick up the fork and eat lukewarm potatoes and runny jello, and when you see him pass by outside your door, his eyes don't look quite so sad. He doesn't visit, but he stands outside the door sometimes, and you can see his hope that one day you won't look at him so terrified. The pleading in his eyes convinces you to take the pills they've prescribed, and you learn to let them do their job, to let yourself try and stop from unraveling more. You learn to call again when the nightmares come back, and Gibbs always answers and leaves the phone on through both of your silences, and you learn to fall back asleep to the symphony of hand tools and bourbon sloshing in the glass as it plays through the phone. The team comes whenever they don't have a case, and their eyes are still guarded but you learn that there's love in there too, you learn that you didn't see it but it's always been there. You still don't talk, but you watch movies with Tony and listen to McGee read to you from his new book, and when Ziva finally visits you see her scared for the first time, and she whispers I'm sorry and please and she lets you paint her nails and you learn to pretend there aren't tears in her eyes and you promise yourself you won't ever mistake her for emotionless again. She brushes your hair and puts it in pigtails for the first time since you came here, and before she leaves you sign I'm trying and I promise and though she may not understand exactly she still lights up, and she tells you she'll stop by tomorrow and tell you about Tony's latest escapades, and last week's case, and the next day, she does.

Gibbs barely visits at first, and you see the blame in his eyes, and you try to tell him with a look that he couldn't have known, that you wouldn't have let him, and he understands and he kisses your cheek and tells you that you scared them all, that you're on medical leave for as long as you need, that your temporary replacement has terrible taste in music. He tells you you need to start talking again, and promises he'll sneak you a Caf-pow if you gain six more pounds. You still won't talk to the doctor who comes every day, but you keep taking the pills and you finish everything they put on your plate. You start to have more nights without nightmares than with them.

One night, when the nightmares have come at you full-force, you wake and he's there inside the room for the first time, though you see him outside with the other doctors most days. Through the tears and short breath you see him reach out to you, and you try to say help but it comes out as Ducky. Ducky. You learn to talk again, slowly, and quietly, as he lies down next to you and pulls you to his chest and you keep whispering his name as your tears soak his shirt and his tears soak your hair. He's still there with his arms around you when you wake up in the morning, and the nurse gives him a look but doesn't say anything, and she smiles when you whisper thank you to the tray she's placed in your lap. You won't let go of him all morning, until Gibbs comes to take him to work and he promises to come back that evening, promises to always come back.

When you're released two weeks later, you go home with him, and though you're technically staying in his guest room you spend every night like that one in the hospital, curled up against him with his arms around you tight. The nightmares don't ever completely stop, but you learn to get through them, and he's always there when you wake up. You start teaching him to sign and pick up a habit of straightening his bow tie each morning, and on Sundays you both stay in bed late and tell stories to each other as he plays with your hair. One Friday you get home late after a night out with Ziva, and he's still waiting up and you whisper I love you and his lips taste like mint tea and in the morning nothing's changed but he holds you a little tighter as neither of you talk about it.

You still play music too loud at the lab, and you still smile and chatter, and if you're sometimes quieter now no one says anything, and you learn that you sometimes need silence to hear your own feelings. Gibbs still hands you a Caf-pow and kisses your cheek, and if he sometimes lingers or holds your gaze for too long, you learn to answer his silence honestly, learn to trust his caring. You are closer to Ziva and you're comfortable with McGee, and Tony is as much your big brother as he's always been, only now when you hug you can feel him mentally calculating your weight, holding you close enough to make sure that your bones don't stick out anymore. If any of them question you staying with Ducky, they don't say it.

There are always new cases, and when some of them strike too close to home you learn to get through it, but you learn not to do it alone. Things become normal again, or a new sort of normal, where you might forget to eat or sleep sometimes still but there's someone there to remind you now, someone to take away the caffeine when your hands start to shake. You learn to say thank you in many different ways, and you learn to separate concern and care from pity and annoyance. You take the pills for a while, and when you decide to stop without telling anyone you have your first real fight with Ducky and you go to bed alone in your coffin, but when you wake up in the morning he's there with you, and he helps you wean off the medication, and if his watchfulness borders on annoying for a while you just love him more for it. When you wake up late one Sunday and he's gone and you can't reach any of the team, you start panicking and jump to the worst, and it isn't until two hours later when he comes home to find you hysterical and hiding under the bedsheets calling every hospital and morgue that you see the note he left on the nightstand saying he was meeting an old friend for breakfast. All day you feel restless, and he notices, and that night you both get drunk and his lips taste like scotch and his skin tastes like apples and in the morning you wake up against his bare chest and nothing's changed but he holds the sign for I love you against your stomach as he breathes in the scent of your hair and neither of you talk about it. It's Monday, and after work he helps you dye your roots black and the two of you cook dinner. You learn that you're happy, or at least content, and you decide to take Ducky bowling next weekend, or maybe the whole team, if you're not working on a case.