Disclaimer: I don't own NCIS New Orleans or its characters… (which after reading this -if you decide to do so- you will likely agree is a good thing.)
Author's Note: I wasn't originally going to post this, but upon further thought, there may be those of you out there that (like myself) enjoy a dark, emotionally angst-filled story once in a while… This stemmed from my tendency to want to push characters to their limits and past their breaking point.
WARNING: CONTAINS SUBJECT MATTER NOT SUITABLE FOR YOUNGER OR SENSITIVE AUDIENCES, INCLUDING NON-CONSENSUAL SEX AND MENTAL ABUSE. (Nothing too explicit in this chapter-this fic focuses on the aftermath of such trauma.)
"Whatchya gonna do about it, Pretty Boy?"
Chris LaSalle grinned at their feisty new recruit. But there was something off in his cheerful response to Percy's snappy comeback. The younger woman was a little bit on the defensive side when it came to criticism of her agent skills... even though the criticism was minor, because Percy's mistakes were minor. Not even really mistakes. Nor errors. Just ignorance about certain protocols and procedures specific to NCIS, which she hadn't encountered before. But either way, they'd all learned how to cope with her snark. LaSalle generally took her quips in stride, good-humor firmly in tact. Well, used to...
Right now, something was off about him. And Merri suspected she knew the source. The man had been through hell in the last six months. Things had just seem to go from bad to worse. Honestly, she couldn't think of anything worse he could suffer that wouldn't end up with him dead. But rather than tip-toe around him, they'd gone on like normal, because Pride thought it was what would help his younger friend, his surrogate son, recover the quickest, and the fullest.
But at this very moment, seeing the subtle strain to the smile that didn't reach his eyes, Merri knew this wasn't an 'ignore it to render it powerless' moment.
"Why don't you check in with Patton," she said to Percy, who hadn't appeared to notice the small flaw in LaSalle's grin. But she couldn't blame the newbie agent. Not only did Merri have interrogation training and a whole year's more familiarity with the man than Sonja Percy, the younger woman was quite preoccupied with learning the ropes and proving herself.
Percy glared at Merri, as if the more senior agent was trying to punish their junior for arguing with her more experienced team mates.
"We can't move anywhere on the Rabideau case if Patton doesn't come up with a location on the man," she said, and Percy seemed to accept the explanation and backed down. She hopped off the edge of LaSalle's desk where she'd been leaning and stalked off towards their computer specialist's lair.
When Merri turned her attention back to LaSalle, he'd dropped the fake smile. His skin had gone rather ashen, a slight sheen of sweat beading on his forehead.
"I think I need some air," he said, getting to his feet and heading towards the courtyard.
Merri hesitated only for a moment before following him. He'd stopped in the middle of the open space, was bent over with his hands on his knees, his head hung down as if he were having difficulty breathing or about to throw up. Maybe both.
More than anything she wanted to touch his arm, place her hand on his back in a comforting gesture. But she wasn't sure how he'd react to physical contact at the moment. Not if... Not if she was right about her conclusions, about what had been triggered. Specifically, she wasn't sure what had set him off. But she was willing to try to figure it out, to help him deal with it, or to avoid it altogether in the future, whatever it may be, just to spare him.
They'd already banned anything remotely licorice flavored from the premises, after that one instance with the anise cookies that had him running off to the bathroom, locking everyone out while he threw up and... sobbed. He probably thought they couldn't hear. But they had heard. They felt his pain every time he let it show. And all the times he managed to keep it hidden, too.
"Chris?"
"I'm alright." He stayed where he was, his back to her, hunched in on himself, taking determined, slow breaths.
"We both know that's not true," Merri said, not wanting to back down yet again, not able to just pretend she couldn't see when he was in pain. He didn't respond to her. "Was it something Percy or I said?"
She'd walked carefully around him, couldn't see his face but saw him nod his head slowly affirmation. God, she wanted to touch him, to physically let him know he wasn't alone.
"May I touch you?" It seemed absolutely ridiculous, like she was asking permission to do something uncommonly intimate, but she supposed given his current mental state, it was.
He nodded his head again, and she placed a hand on his shoulder in as soft a touch as she could. No pressure or weight to it, nothing threatening in the least. His shoulder was warm but the muscle trembled slightly beneath her hand.
"Let's sit down," she said, coaxing him over to the patio table and chairs. She frowned a little to herself. He'd been hiding this, those times when he was suffering and broken, from the rest of them, trying to stay strong for them. And for some reason, she'd expected him to become agitated and violent when set off, like the fighter he was. But it tore her heart out to learn the truth, that he was defeated and compliant when he was dragged down into that dark place.
He'd propped his elbows on the glass table top, buried his face in his hands, was still breathing in that purposeful way of people who were afraid they wouldn't be able to take in that next lungful.
"Can you tell me what it was?" Merri asked. Emboldened by the fact that he hadn't reacted negatively to her touching him, she began to run her hand up and down his back in what she hoped was a soothing way. "Maybe we can avoid-"
"It's stupid." His voice was strangled, the words choked out and practically unintelligible, but she understood.
"It is not stupid, Chris," she said. "Not if it hurts you."
He picked up his head, looked at her, his blue eyes glistening with tears as he sought her gaze, searched her own eyes, for what? She couldn't be sure, but she hoped he could find what he needed there that would allow him to trust her, to confide in her, that would allow her to help him.
He turned his head away, and didn't look at her once as he spoke. But speak, he did. And her heart broke.
"He-" LaSalle cleared his throat. But when he continued he didn't name the man. He didn't have to. There could only be one man he could be talking about. "He called me 'Pretty Boy'... An' 'Blue Eyes'..."
They sounded like affectionate pet names. Not what- Not what she would've expected the man who'd held her friend captive for nearly a month, raped and tortured him, to use.
"That was when he was makin' love ta me."
Oh, Chris.
She squeezed the back of his neck with one hand, rubbing at the knots with her thumb, as she rubbed his bicep with the other, leaning in to rest her chin on his shoulder and whisper quietly, calmly, firmly to him.
"No matter what he did to you, made you believe, he was never making love to you. He forced you, Chris. He raped you."
"Not entirely." It was a hoarse whisper, accompanied by tears. "By the end, I was willin'. More than willin'."
He looked at her, his deep blue eyes filled with such anguish that Merri wished she wasn't capable of human emotion, wished that she could rip her heart from her chest and lock it away so she wouldn't feel for her friend.
"He broke me, Mere. He broke me good 'n' hard."
Never in her life had she so badly wanted to look away. Usually, she was the one who out-stared others. But -oh, her heart- how she wanted to be the one to flinch. Yet she couldn't. She had to be strong for her suffering friend, who'd finally chosen to share his pain with her. And she would take as much as he could give her, shoulder it so that maybe it would relieve a little of his burden.
"After he grew tired of fightin' with me, keepin' me restrained, he stuck me in a small, dark room for I dunno... mebbe a few days. Mebbe a week. Prob'ly a week, considerin' he left me seven glow sticks like them deep sea divers use. He also left me some jugs a water, a box a powerbars and a bucket for a commode. But not a stitch a clothin' or a blanket or nothin' ta keep me from shiverin' the whole time."
His voice had calmed as he explained the facts in a detached sort of way, but the strain returned as he continued, the emotions surfacing with the trauma.
"Some people can do solitary like that without battin' an eyelash. But I ain't like that. I jus' ain't. I need ta be 'round people. I can't be shut up like that, like a veal in a cage. No. Worse than a veal in a cage. No light. No sound. No warmth."
Merri wrapped her arms completely around her friend, leaning to the very edge of her own chair as she cuddled against him, instinctively responding to his blatant need for comforting. He seemed to respond, gain a little strength from the contact. She wasn't a touchy-feely person by nature, but she well knew the benefits of physical contact, that most people, especially people like Chris who thrived on human interaction, needed it, could be healed by it in ways words never could provide.
"By the time he took me outta that hole, I was so messed up, I thought I'd died. Death's just a dark, cold, lonesome place, ya know. He brought me back inta the light. It was so bright I had ta keep my eyes closed for a good hour. I savored ev'ry touch. He cleaned me up an' laid me back on the same bed he... as before. But the fresh sheet felt soft aginst my skin, the mattress heavenly compared to the cold, hard cement a that hole.
An' when he climbed atop me, touchin' me... that felt good, too."
Chris paused for a moment, and Merri quietly waited for him, watching his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed hard.
"He kissed me on the mouth. He'd never done that before, sayin' that he wouldn't gi' me the chance ta bite him. But he knew he'd broke me then. 'Cause he kissed me. An'- An' I kissed him right back."
Merri buried her face in his shoulder. He wasn't meeting her eyes as he told his story, instead staring at some nonexistent point on the other side of the courtyard, but still she didn't want him to have the chance to see the tears that had begun to slide down her own cheeks.
"An' when he took me, I was willin'. More than willin'. I was eager to feel 'im fuckin' me. I even wrapped my legs around 'im. Met 'im thrust fer thrust. It still hurt. Always hurt. But hurtin' was better than the numbness of that dark, cold, lonesome death I thought he'd left me ta suffer."
"You were happy to be alive," Merri whispered into his neck.
"Yeah. Guess that's what it was." His fingers had wrapped around her bare forearm that was pressed tightly against his chest, and they absently stroked her skin. She was relieved by the response it indicated. Maybe he was surfacing from the dark place they'd inadvertently forced him to relive.
"But from then on, I did whatever he tole me ta do. Willin'ly."
"No," Merri said, maybe in a little too harsh a tone to be using with a rape survivor having a flashback. But however angry she was at her friend's being tortured and lastingly emotionally scarred, she was a thousand times more furious that the evil bastard had made his victim think, even for a moment, that he'd wanted to be hurt, violated.
She consciously softened her tone before she spoke again. "He may have taken the fight out of you, Chris, but that doesn't mean you were consenting."
"But I shoulda fought," he said. "If I hadna been so shit-faced drunk-off-my-ass in the first place, I might've realized I been fuckin' roofied. I never woulda woken up hangin' in some warehouse like a piece a meat, sold an' used like a disposable toy."
"It's not your fault," she said. "If we had a case with a victim who'd been drugged and raped, would you tell that person it was their fault? That because they'd done something like go out to a bar and drink a little too much, they deserved to be assaulted?"
She pulled away, out of the tight embrace she'd been holding him in, coaxing him with her hand on his cheek.
"Look at me, Chris." Tear-and-pain-filled blue eyes met hers. "You wouldn't think those things of a survivor of kidnapping and abuse. So why do you think them about yourself? You're a fighter, damn it. I know it. We all know it. You made it back to us. He left you beaten, broken, stranded in the middle of nowhere, but you survived."
"He's still out there, Mere," Chris said, his voice sounding hollow, gutted... his emotional entrails spilled out before her.
"We'll get him," she said, meaning it, and at the same time knowing how futile a pursuit it might in reality be. And the perpetrator knew it, too. He hadn't cared that Chris had seen his face -had seen his entire naked body, Brody more than suspected. Even when he'd dumped his victim in a remote backwoods of southern Arkansas, after raping him and beating him one last time before drugging and disposing of his plaything, he hadn't bothered to clean up his mess. He'd left his DNA all over Chris. And running it had confirmed their suspicions... He wasn't in any database. Patton was still running down a few remote small town PDs in various part of the country who hadn't linked in to any larger judicial network.
Okay, that was untrue. There were several cases on file that had popped up as matches. The bastard had done this before, to both men and women, various ages. He seemed entirely indiscriminatory. Well, not entirely. The victims were all attractive, albeit in different ways. And it had always been like with LaSalle, entirely untraceable. Individuals taken by an intermediate while at their most vulnerable. Doubtless stalked and targeted, but not by the man whose sadistic hands they ultimately ended up in. A sort of in-country human trafficking. In Chris' case, sadly unlike so many other missing person and rape cases, they had a team of investigators determined to find their friend, and when he'd resurfaced from his ordeal, track down the bastard who'd basically broken him. They were too late in figuring out who had originally drugged him, sold him to the sadist who'd held him captive for a month. The middleman was already dead. And the few leads there were, were dead ends.
Their traumatized team mate had tried to move on. He hadn't had a drink since then. He no longer went out. But Merri wasn't sure those were necessarily good signs. He'd stopped living. Because he was afraid? Maybe. But it didn't seem to be that. He'd still been a solid partner, having their backs in the field and the office. It was more that his playful spirit had been crushed. Even after Savannah, the drinking, the womanizing... He'd just been trying to find a way to preserve his good natured, people-loving soul.
Now, now Merri feared her friend's eminently large heart had been crushed beyond repair. She was by no means religious but she found herself praying fiercely to anyone who would listen, silently imploring, pleading for her friend to be healed, or at least be capable of healing given the time and care he required.
She wasn't sure how much time had passed, but her fingers had begun to go numb from clinging to her damaged friend, desperate not to let go of him, afraid she would lose him to the darkness. God knew she'd hold him like that forever if it gave him even an iota of comfort.
"I think I'm gonna hit the sack," he said, his voice sounding so unexpectedly normal that it startled her. She took it as a signal to let go, and hastily pulled away from him. "But, uh, Merri?"
"Yeah?" He shifted in his seat, looking uncomfortable, embarrassed. Maybe now that he'd regained his control, he was shamed by everything he'd told her. Even despite her insistence that none of it was his fault.
"Would ya spend the night wi' me?"
She wasn't able to school her reaction in time, felt her eyes grow wide.
"Not-" LaSalle blurted out loudly and then paused, lowering his voice. "Not like that. Jus' watch over me."
The sadness that had never really left her heart returned to its full intensity at the desperate, exhausted expression on his face.
"I keep havin' nightmares," he said. "An' sometimes I can't wake up from 'em."
"I can do that, Chris," she said, squeezing his shoulder in a reassuring manner that had him looking at her, his pretty blue eyes filled with relief. "I want to do that for you."
A/N: Yeah, I know. It's dark and twisted. But it just means the healing in the end is going to be all the sweeter…
