Damaged but Not Broken
by immertreu
February 18, 2014
Harry knew he should have expected the sight, but it was still a shock when they finally found Lucas who had been snatched from them only five days ago.
Ros cut the zip ties that bound their bloodied and exhausted colleague to the chair in the middle of the filthy, gray room. Harry hovered nearby, waiting in case his officer needed a strong grip to keep him upright.
Neither of them was ready for the violent reaction the falling of the bindings caused.
Lucas jumped up and attacked Harry without a second thought. He pressed the smaller man to the wall next to the entrance to his prison and choked him with both hands, clearly not feeling the pain of his raw wrists and damaged fingers, his bruises and other unseen injuries inflicted on him.
His vision failing rapidly, Harry didn't even have time to fight back. He became dimly aware of Ros shouting for help while trying to get Lucas off him, but anguish and panic gave the tortured man much more strength than he should possess. Lucas shook her off with ease and threw her into the wall.
The iron grip on Harry's throat never waned.
His friend wasn't himself. Lucas' eyes were unseeing, the rage in them unlike anything Harry had ever experienced, reflecting the eight years the spook spent in Russian hell.
Harry tried to speak, to appeal to him, but no sound made it past his abused throat. Finally, when he thought he would really die at the hands of one of his most trusted colleagues, the events of the past few days finally caught up with Lucas. The younger man simply collapsed.
Ros' shouts for assistance turned into yells for a medic, and she immediately knelt at Lucas' side, trying not to touch him while assessing the most severe of his injuries. Harry could see how hard she fought the nausea and anger that threatened to overcome her professionalism. Harry felt the same. They all had developed a soft spot for their quiet, headstrong colleague who had suffered so much already for Queen and country.
Still gasping for breath, Harry bent down to check Lucas' pulse. Pointedly ignoring Ros' glances, he concentrated on the slow but steady beat beneath his fingertips. He only moved away when the team of emergency medical personnel arrived, hoping against hope that the unconscious man could draw strength from the warm and gentle human contact.
They would not lose Lucas now. Not after everything he had been through to be returned to them in the first place. Not when he had fought so hard to come back to them, damaged but not broken.
His injuries would heal. Yet his state of mind was a whole other question that worried Harry to no end. Had Lucas been pushed too far this time?
There was a reason for agents getting a room all to themselves when in the hospital. Many of them had experienced serious trauma or injury, but Lucas' awakenings after surgery or any other event that put him out cold were always the worst to witness.
Lucas came to in his usual violent fashion: His eyelids started to flutter for only a few seconds, then he flailed awake from a nightmare – only to be stopped by the tubes and cables attached to his arms, torso and face.
Ros had been keeping an eye on her colleague from a chair by the door and jumped up the moment the heart monitor went wild, but she couldn't stop Lucas from panicking. She knew exactly what was going on in his head because she had seen it before – there was nothing she could do to prevent it from happening again.
His eyes didn't see his colleague but fixated on the white walls of the private hospital room, reminding him of a prison cell. The medical apparatus watching over him was torture equipment, and Ros was nothing more than just another interrogator, waiting for Lucas to recover so she could continue his questioning. She tried talking to him anyway, to rouse him enough so he would recognize her and his surroundings.
"Lucas," she called softly, not stepping closer and putting up her hands in a calming gesture. "It's me, Ros. We got you out. You're in the hospital."
Lucas didn't react to her words but tried to get up again, only to grimace in pain and be checked by the strap across his upper body that kept him in place.
"Lucas!" Ros tried again. "You're safe. We're in London. Harry's just downstairs, looking for a decent cup of tea. We were all quite worried, but we knew you would pull through." She knew she was talking sentimental nonsense, but as long as it kept Lucas from harming himself – or her – she would do whatever it took. And if he ever repeated what she'd said outside this room, she'd just have to kill him. "I always knew my bedside manners sucked, but really, this is a little too much, don't you think?"
Lucas suddenly fell still, not comprehending her words but recognising the voice and its inflictions, the sarcasm that was all Ros, and her hidden worry.
He stopped fighting his restraints and slumped back. "Ros?" he whispered from under the oxygen mask placed above his nose and mouth.
She finally dared to step nearer. "Yes, Lucas, it's me. You're safe," she repeated. "The doctors say you will be fine." Seeing him fiddle with the bond that kept him immobile, she snapped, "Quit that! Or do you want to fall out of bed?"
He smirked slightly, the old Lucas slowly surfacing again after the horrors of his nightmare.
Satisfied that she had gotten through to him and ignoring her colleague's glare, she went for the door. "Don't move," she threatened. "I'm getting Harry and the doctor."
She needn't have bothered. The door opened the moment she reached for the handle, and Lucas' doctor barged in with a nurse close on his heels, alarmed by the equipment linked to the nurses' station. Seeing their patient awake and slightly more relaxed than just a moment before, they slowed their pace.
"Could you step outside a moment, please?" the nurse asked politely, while the doctor carefully went over to Lucas' bedside and started asking some questions Ros couldn't make out. Lucas responded with nodding, though, so she left the room as instructed, satisfied that no violence was about to erupt.
With Lucas you just never knew. Hospitals didn't sit well with him, and he was strong when he felt threatened. The bruises currently adorning Harry's neck confirmed that.
Their boss rounded the corner when she closed the door behind her. Seeing her, he quickened his pace, but Ros said, "He's awake, he's fine. He didn't tear apart the room."
Harry smirked wryly, also remembering Lucas' first hospital stay after his return from Russia. Things hadn't gone well for anyone that day. And that was putting it mildly.
Lucas had spent the fortnight after the "incident" cooped up in his apartment, dutifully kept alive by his colleagues with any kind of fast food they could think of. He had hated every minute of his enforced confinement, but walking more than a few steps with a broken leg, a sprained wrist and a couple of cracked ribs had simply been impossible. Two of the nurses and the doctor who had tried to hold him down for treatment had sported black eyes and various scrapes and bruises for weeks.
Not anxious for a repeat performance, Harry inched closer to the door, listening for any kind of trouble. When only faint murmuring could be heard, he turned to Ros and handed her a cup of coffee from the cafeteria downstairs. "Here, you look like you could use it."
Ros accepted the hot beverage gratefully. She would never admit it, of course, but seeing Lucas in a hospital bed scared her and always reminded her of his past which she usually suppressed. She couldn't imagine the horrors he'd been through, but she remembered how she had first seen him at St. Augustus War Memorial after his fight with Tranquility.
He'd been unshaven, with shaggy and greasy hair that stuck up in every direction. Almost dead on his feet. Anxious to prove himself. Insecure and angry at not having been able to prevent yet more deaths. Damaged beyond belief. Confused. And so very dark. There was no better word to describe his state back then.
At first Ros had hated Lucas for not stopping Adam from driving to his death, but that feeling had been unfair and childish, so she tried to let it go. When he returned to the Grid she mistrusted him, the spook who had spent eight years with the enemy, but soon she learned how deep his loyalty really ran, how much he had endured to protect their secrets and find his way home one day.
After that, she had started to secretly admire him for his ability to pick up the pieces of his life and move on, seemingly without a hitch. He hardly ever slipped and allowed anyone to see behind his many masks, but Ros knew better than to assume that Lucas wouldn't have nightmares for the rest of his life, or that he didn't have to work extremely hard to keep up appearances. Yet Harry and she had cleared him for duty, and he hadn't let them down since. She just hoped his latest capture hadn't thrown him back too much to ever recover. Harry would never forgive himself.
Glancing at him, Ros found her boss equally deep in thought. "Harry?"
He glanced at her, guilt written all over his face. "Yes?"
"It wasn't your fault."
He scoffed.
"I mean it," she insisted. "There was nothing anyone could have done. It was a stupid accident that they made him and snatched him up. Your feeling responsible for it won't help him. You know it, Lucas knows it. Let it go."
Harry sighed and prepared to answer but got rescued by the nurse appearing in the doorway. "You can come in now." She stepped aside to let them enter the room. They both dropped their half-emptied paper cups into the bin by the door and went in to see after their injured colleague.
The doctor had replaced the full oxygen mask with a nasal cannula, and the strap holding Lucas in bed was gone albeit a few of the cables attached to the monitoring equipment were still in place. He looked paler than usual which highlighted the circles under his eyes. They seemed close to the color of his dark hair in the artificial light. His split lip and the cuts and bruises on his face only reinforced his pastiness. His hands were carefully bandaged, as were his wrists, which had been torn by the plastic ties. A sheet covered his other injuries. His eyes were bloodshot but clearer than before, and Harry smelled trouble before Lucas had even opened his mouth. He hissed, more forceful than he had intended, "Don't even say it!"
Lucas eyed him wearily but luckily kept silent. "You are not leaving this room until the doctor has cleared you. Is that understood?" Harry demanded, glad that his voice didn't reflect how much speaking still hurt his throat. He knew he was unreasonably brash, but he didn't have the energy to argue with an irritated Lucas right now.
He had been pacing up and down the corridor for hours until Ros sent him to find some tea or coffee, and he was at the end of his rope. Five days of frantic searching had worn his patience thin and raised his worries to new heights. Then the friend they were about to rescue had tried to strangle him. And here they finally were, in yet another hospital. Harry had almost lost track of how many times Lucas had been shot, stabbed, beaten, hit by a car (or bike, or truck…) since his return to active duty, and he was getting sick of worrying about his former protégé.
Understandably, Lucas hated hospital rooms almost as much as prison cells, but there was no helping it. His wounds needed time to heal. Luckily, they were mostly bruises and cuts. The doctor had said he was dehydrated and malnourished – again. And they still didn't know his state of mind. They weren't taking any chances this time.
Ros, sensing that either a heated argument was about to break out or that Lucas would simply shut down right in front of them, stepped in. "I think what Harry meant to say was that he – we – are glad to have you back and that you should take your time to get well. Properly, that is."
Lucas looked mutinous but still didn't say a word, heeding Harry's warning from before. At least she hoped that was what he was doing. She didn't want to think about the alternative, that he was drawing back into himself for protection – like he had done in Russia in order to survive.
"Do you need anything?" she continued, but Lucas shook his head and closed his eyes. Worried, she cast a glance at the doctor who had kept away from the disagreement. He smiled and said softly, "It was to be expected. I administered a light sedative when it became apparent that his surroundings affected him too much. He will be fine. He just needs time to heal."
"How long?" an unexpected voice rasped from the bed. Ros glanced down to see Lucas watching them through half-lidded eyes.
The doctor thought for a moment and finally said, "36 hours if all the blood tests come back negative and there are no complications or infections. Then you can go home. And rest!" he emphasized.
Lucas stared at him, pain and anger battling in his hooded eyes, but eventually nodded. Then he murmured something in Russian, turned his head away from them, and apparently fell asleep.
Ros often marveled at his ability to switch languages so easily. She knew he had always been good at it, having been married to a Russian and all. But she always thought that if she were in his shoes, she'd never again want to hear – let alone speak – the language of the people who had robbed him of eight years of his life, and whose sound must surely remind him of his torment. Yet he tended to swear in Russian or mumble something in his slumber when he was injured as he was now.
The psychologists would probably have a field day with this, but none of the team had ever mentioned it to them when questioned about Lucas' performance shortly after his return. It didn't pose a problem, so why mention it? It was just curious. One more layer to the mystery that was Lucas North.
Or maybe that was his secret, his only way of staying sane by conquering his fears and showing the world – and himself – that he was stronger than his past. That he wasn't the victim they had tried to make him. And besides: Where else was he to go? His job was his life. As it was for all of them.
The End
A/N: Thanks yet again to IcyWaters, my faithful beta.
I always had this idea in my head about what would happen if Lucas ever got captured again. Would he finally lose it or prove to be stronger than his past? I hope this fic did him justice (the 9th season of Spooks definitely didn't…just my opinion).