Every morning, at precisely 4:34 am, he sat by her bedside with a glass of water in his hand. He would wait for her to wake up from a nightmare, screaming, as she always did. It had been that way since she returned. Every morning, he would try to calm her down. Every morning, he knew it was just the beginning of what was to be a miserable day for the both of them.
He couldn't bring himself to leave her. He didn't want to. No matter how miserable it made him, how exhausted he was both emotionally and physically of trying to keep her stable throughout the day, he wouldn't leave her. He could see how restless she was. He wanted to help her. He needed to help her. Not only for her, but for himself.
She rarely spoke to him, rarely looked at him. Whenever she did speak, her voice was coarse, cold, distant. She wasn't callous. She tried to tell him to leave her alone, to live his life the way he should, and to be happy. It killed her knowing that she had done this to him, made him nothing more than a drone.
He no longer knew her, she no longer knew him.
They had become distant after she had had her first episode. He knew what was wrong. He wanted to help her. She wouldn't let him. There were days where she wouldn't sleep. She would stare at the ceiling for hours and hours on end. After a while, she began to sleep on the couch, refusing to let him near her, fearing that she would hurt him. He couldn't stand it. He took the couch the next night and let her sleep in the bedroom. Two days later, she woke up screaming from a nightmare. That was when the awful cycle began.
It was always worse after they came home from a case. She was always on edge, but more so during a case. When they got home, she would get angry over the smallest things. She wouldn't eat. She would shut the door in his face and sometimes, she would lock him out of the apartment. The worst came when she felt the triggers. She would suddenly be transported back to the warehouse with a stake in her hand. She would try and hurt him, but she didn't know any better. She would hear voices, gunshots, screaming. She would shut her eyes and put her hands over her ears. It was slowly tearing her apart.
He had become pale and sickly thin trying to care for her. He was trying. He missed who she used to be. He still tried to love what was left of her. He sits around, watching her, waiting for her to finally say something to him, to talk to him like she used to. But she doesn't. He keeps hoping, but she fails him every time.
But these days are different. She's coming alive again. She lets him hold her sometimes. She still rarely speaks, but she smiles now. Her smiles are weak, fragile, but it shows him that she's really trying to be her again. He tells her that she has done nothing wrong and that he loves her the same, and it's true. She doesn't have her episodes as often as she used to. She's trying. He can see it in the way she opens her mouth to finally speak and suddenly closes it, as not to say the wrong thing. He can see it when she reaches out a shaky hand to touch his cheek.
He can see it in her eyes. They aren't distant and gray as they used to be. He can see the beauty and the life coming back to them.
He sees that she's trying when she struggles to say to him, "Spencer… I think…I think that I...I'm not okay."
