Author's Note: Hello to everyone still out there in The Brave fandom. For those who have partial stories posted, I look forward to reading updates. For those working on new stories, I can't wait to see what you come up with for our favorite characters. In the meantime, here is the first chapter of a story that has been sitting on my iPhone for a while.
Leave
Jaz leaned back against her apartment building and watched as night slowly turned to day. While it was a beautiful view, she wished she was on the other side of the world watching it with her team. If things hadn't gone horribly wrong that is exactly where she would have been at this very moment. Instead, she'd been home in Philadelphia for a couple of weeks, and she still looked around feeling disconnected. She felt like she didn't belong. Granted she wasn't in the States much, but when she wasn't abroad, this was her home and it usually suited her. Since she was well aware that things here were basically the same, she knew she was what had changed.
Jaz knew many of her colleagues would practically kill to be released from their rotation early. They often wished to escape from being with the same people twenty-four hours a day seven days a week. She was not one of them. For her this leave was nothing more than unwanted time away from her team. She'd trade it to someone else in a heartbeat if she could. Unfortunately the military didn't work that way.
After the trauma she had suffered in Iran, Top had offered rotating home early as an option. An option which she had declined. Unfortunately, higher up the military chain, it was decided that she was going home to recuperate whether she wanted to or not. Top had argued that she was entitled to make her own decisions but he had been overruled. Apparently there were some battles even Top couldn't win and this had been one of them. Once they had conceded defeat, the team had all piled into a truck and accompanied her to the airstrip to see her off. She was grateful she had managed to keep from bursting into tears but it had been a close call. It was that moment when she realized maybe she wasn't as "good" as she was telling them.
Since her departure from Turkey she had spoken to them a few times. They were still mission active so the conversations were shorter than any of them liked. However, during one of those short calls, they had managed to plan a team gathering at Preach's house three weeks after their rotation was officially over. Until then she was at loose ends.
In order to fill her time, as soon as she had been physically able, she had started walking large swaths of the city during the daytime hours. Her knee couldn't handle anything more stressful. She needed to wait for her other wounds to heal before she would be able to handle any workouts at the gym. While the days were monotonous at least she had a goal. A mission to complete. The nights were much harder for her. The long quiet hours gave her time to think about how wrong things had gone and how much she missed the guys. She missed Preach's quiet words of wisdom (she could really use them to keep her going), Amir's breakfasts (she knew she was losing weight without them), and McG's banter (she could use a laugh about now). She especially missed Top and not just for one reason. While she would never admit it out loud to anyone, he was the most important person in her life. He listened to her, respected her input, and made her feel important to both him and to the team. Her chest ached constantly at their separation. Considering they were usually in different places when they were off rotation, she was surprised to be having so much difficulty this time. Somehow the fact that she'd been forced to leave them behind made the entire experience different.
She was. . . . she guessed lonely was the right word. During the time she had been in captivity, all she had prayed for was to see her team one more time. She knew she should count her blessings that she'd had that opportunity. But she wanted more. Now she prayed to be back with them full time. Unfortunately it would be quite a while before that happened.
After making it through another day, Jaz returned to her apartment just as night was falling. She slowly climbed the stairs to her fifth floor apartment. The elevator would have been faster, and less painful, but she didn't like the feeling of being trapped. Yet another new issue to go along with the night terrors and her uncontrollable startle response.
Before she had arrived back in the States, she probably should have looked for a place outside the city. Somewhere quieter. Somewhere she was less likely to disturb others. Hindsight was 20/20. She was just lucky that so far no one in her building had called the cops when she woke herself, and probably them, screaming. She assumed they were taking pity on her since there was no way any of the tenants could miss that she had been injured.
She kept hoping the nightmares would stop so she could get the rest she knew she needed. The thing that frustrated her the most was that she couldn't remember any of the details of the dreams. Only feelings of pain, fear, and helplessness which weren't feelings she liked to entertain. It didn't take a genius to figure out where the nightmares originated. While she desperately wanted to put the entire Iran experience behind her, she was discovering that was easier said than done.