She wouldn't leave. She sat at his bedside and held his hand while he slept uneasily, muttering, whimpering, shuddering. She knew the horrors in his mind and part of her wanted to wake him, to soothe him, but this had to be the first real sleep he'd had in weeks, sedative-induced that it was. His fingers squeezed painfully on hers, making her wince, but she bore it. She stroked his wrist with her other hand, trying to offer some inkling of comfort to his tormented mind.
It wasn't enough. She could see the nightmare rising, see him fighting to free himself from it – from them – and she was ready to reach her free hand to his shoulder as he broke through the artificial slumber into screaming awareness.
"It's OK, it's OK, it's OK, it's OK," she repeated the refrain he'd given her when he had freed her from her living nightmare. "It's OK, it's OK."
He trembled, trying to curl up on himself, his eyes blinking awake as screams faltered in harsh breaths of shock and horror and then, finally, he focused on her.
"Chloe?" he whispered in a hoarse voice.
She tried to smile for him. She brushed her fingers against his unshaven cheek.
"I'm here, Nicholas. I'm here. We escaped. It's OK. The tracker's gone. You'll be OK," she promised, wishing she really believed her own words.
TJ came into view, reaching down, and he shrunk back, eyes instantly widening. Chloe leapt up to her feet and spread her hand out close to the other woman's chest, not quite physically forcing her away, but communicating the intent. She felt her jaw tighten with rage, with protective instinct.
Their blue eyes collided and TJ took an involuntary step backwards, spreading her own hands out.
"I need to check the IV and the surgical dressing," she said.
Chloe glared at her for a long moment, the turned her head to look down at Nicholas. His breathing had evened out, the tremors had lessened, he gave her the briefest of nods. His hand, however, remained clamped around her own. She squeezed it, despite the sore numbness of her fingers, and he relaxed his grip just a bit. She sat down at his side and let TJ do a quick examination, intently monitoring every motion the woman made.
TJ retreated quickly, glancing back at Chloe over her shoulder, trying to meet her eyes, but Chloe turned her own back on TJ, focusing on Nicholas, stroking a few strands of brown hair out of his dark eyes.
"Thirsty?" she asked softly.
He nodded, finally let go of her hand so she could hold the glass and his head as he sipped.
After he had swallowed enough to please her, he laid his head back down on the pillow, closed his eyes just for a second, and then jerked them open again.
She didn't have to ask. The same thing happened to her when she tried to close her own eyes and what she'd suffered was only the tiniest fraction of the terror he'd been through. Sometimes she thought that she shared his nightmares; that somehow their minds were linked by whatever the aliens had done. She hadn't been the one strapped down and had their chest cut open without anesthesia, who'd screamed himself silent as they tore him open and put an alien device inside of him. She wasn't the one who'd had their mind and body violated for hours, days, without hope of help. But she felt it, experienced it in her own dreams.
No one else could begin to comprehend what he – what they - had suffered. No one. Even the ones who tried, like Lisa Park and Dale Volker, couldn't connect with the sheer mental and physical violation of it. Chloe had appreciated the attempts, but had been unable to avoid the inevitable desire to shout at them. "You don't know! You don't know!"
The ones who had hovered at a distance, watching, they were even worse. Eli, Matt… they'd both stood there and stared at her as she stayed stubbornly, unrelentingly, at Nicholas' bedside, refusing to leave even to shower or eat. Any attempt they'd made to talk to her had been met with cold silence. She wasn't going to argue or explain. They knew what their precious Colonel had done and by allowing it, they were complicit in it. Matt had been willing to tear the tracker from Nicholas' chest without an ounce of concern. They'd let the Colonel deliberately attempt murder, leave a man to die alone, abandoned without food or water or hope, left him to be captured and inhumanly tortured, and had turned a blind eye. She wasn't sure she could ever forgive them for that, as much as it hurt her to see the pain on their faces when she turned her back on them.
She had nightmares of her own, when exhaustion would overtake her and she'd unwillingly fall asleep beside Nicholas. She'd wake gasping for air, trembling, sobbing. And Nicholas would simply take her hand in his and hold it. He'd look quietly, silently at her, knowing that words were useless and they didn't need them. He knew. Nothing else mattered.
In a strange way, even though he'd been tortured far, far worse than she had, and she saw his constant battle with the nightmares, the flashbacks, the ever-present fear, he remained a support for her. She was nursing him, holding him through the night terrors, feeding him, caring for him, and yet, she still drew strength from him. He kept struggling, fighting, determined to survive, to keep them safe, no matter what it cost him.
So she did the same. She was strong for him.
He'd protected her.
She'd protect him.