Hi everyone!
I wanted to thank you all for your feedback on Somehow, and for how supportive you've all been. I can't tell you how much it means to me.
And here's something new! Hope you all enjoy.
-o-o-
It's late at night when they finally arrive back on base, but Dalton builds a bonfire anyway. The rest of the team showers off the grime and exhaustion of nearly six days tracking a terrorist through the jungles of the Central African Republic and stumbles outside with six-packs of beer and a bottle of whiskey, desperately needing the release.
Amir and Preach toss horseshoes and argue over who is or isn't cheating, while McGuire does three shots of whiskey in quick succession, his voice getting louder and faster as he tells Jaz a difficult-to-follow story about a set of twins he'd met at a tiki bar in the Seychelles.
Dalton watches her face in the flickering light of the fire as she laughs, egging McG on, sipping her beer and smirking as he feigns offense at her ribbing.
He can't help smiling. She looks happy. Relaxed. Settled.
It's been a long time since he's seen her like this. Since before Tehran maybe, or even since before Elijah died.
He throws another log on the fire and grabs a fresh beer, content to sit slightly apart and watch his team. His family.
Nobody even looks up when the sat phone rings.
Dalton already knows it's not another mission, not so soon after this last marathon, so he's relaxed as he answers the call. "This is Dalton."
"Hi Adam," Patricia's voice says. She sounds - wary. Uncertain. Dalton stands up from his folding chair, unconsciously drifting away from the bonfire. "Do you have a second?"
"Sure," he says cautiously. "Everything okay?"
"I'm sorry to call so late," she says.
Stalling. She's stalling. Adam frowns.
"Patricia?"
"I just got a call from Personnel," she tells him. "It's - Jaz's father had a massive stroke this morning. He's in a coma, and they don't expect him to recover."
Dalton's breath catches in his throat. His eyes drift sideways, towards Jaz. He watches as she playfully punches McGuire in the chest, her face wide open with laughter.
Dammit.
"Adam?" Patricia says, and he realizes he's zoned out.
"Yeah," he sighs. "Sorry. How much time do they think he has?"
"No more than a couple days," Patricia says. "My understanding is that he's on life support. They're just waiting until Jaz can get there."
Dalton's heart aches. "Okay," he manages.
"Tell Jaz she should take as long as she needs," Patricia continues. Her voice is formal and professional, but Dalton can hear the empathy underneath. "Hannah's gonna get her on a transport to Ramstein in the morning, and then we'll find a commercial flight out of Frankfurt. We'll try to keep your team offline for a few weeks while she's gone."
"Thanks Patricia," he says. He suddenly feels exhausted.
"We'll call back with details when we have them," she says.
"Okay," Dalton says woodenly.
"And, Adam?" Patricia blurts out, before he can end the call. "Tell her - whatever she needs. Anything at all."
Dalton pockets the phone and leans against the side of the Quonset hut, watching her. She and McG have turned the teasing on Preach, who pretends to look affronted as Amir guffaws.
He and Jaz high-five, and it sends a ripple of pain through Dalton's chest.
Dammit.
"Hey, Jaz, can I talk to you a minute?" he says, shuffling towards them, hands stuffed deep in the pockets of his jeans. Best to just get it over with. Like ripping off a band-aid.
She's still laughing as she looks up, but the smile quickly fades at the expression on his face. "Everything okay?" she asks hesitantly, eyebrows raised.
He nods toward the Quonset hut, away from the team. "I've just gotta talk to you about something," he says uncomfortably.
Jaz turns toward McG, who shrugs. Preach puts a hand on her shoulder, and she gets up and follows Dalton into the hut.
"What's going on?" she asks impatiently.
"Sit, okay?" he says, gesturing towards the couch, but she folds her arms across her chest and glares at him. He sighs, rubbing his beard, unable to look at her. "Um. That was Patricia. She - it's your dad."
Jaz's entire body stiffens. Her face hardens, goes blank. "What about him?"
"He had a stroke," he says gently, taking a cautious step towards her. "He's in a coma."
Jaz's eyes give nothing away. She doesn't move, doesn't speak.
"I'm so sorry, Jaz," he says.
Jaz takes a slow, shaky breath, and for a second, he thinks she might cry. "Okay," she says instead, her voice flat and even. "Is that all?"
Dalton's not sure what he was expecting, but that wasn't it. "I - uh, Patricia said to take as much time as you need," he says. "Hannah's gonna - they're working on getting you on a transport to Ramstein and then a flight out of Frankfurt. They'll call back when-"
"No, thanks," she says. "I'd rather - I appreciate it, but I don't need to go home."
He gapes at her.
"Jaz, your dad - Patricia said he's only got a couple days left," Dalton says. Her expression doesn't change. He tries to reason with her. "She told me they're just waiting until you get there to disconnect the ventilator."
She blinks once. Turns away.
"I'm really tired," she says. "I'm gonna go to bed."
Dalton watches her walk away.
Shit.
-o-o-
He gives her a few minutes, then follows her to her room, knocks on the doorframe. When she doesn't answer, he pushes aside the curtain she uses as a door and slides in.
He watches as she unlaces her boots and shucks them off, lining them up neatly in the corner. "I'm fine," she says, before he can speak.
"Jaz," he tries, hesitantly. "I know this is hard, but-"
"It's not," she says. "I'm fine."
She sits down on the bed, takes off her rings and sets them in the little blue Turkish ceramic dish she keeps on the nightstand. Her earrings and necklace follow, like it's just a normal night, like she's just casually getting ready for bed.
He sits down beside her and she flinches. It's barely perceptible, but he notices, of course.
"He's dying," he says gently, cautiously.
"Yep," she says.
Simple. Harsh. Calm.
"I - I just don't want you to regret anything," he says. "I know that - your relationship with your dad hasn't been easy, but…" He sighs, not sure how to phrase this. "If this is your last chance to say...anything you need to say…"
"You said he's on life support, right?" she asks, and he's never heard her this callous, this empty. "So it's not like he could hear it anyway."
"Yeah, but that's not…" He studies her profile. She won't look at him.
"Would you go?" she asks flippantly. "If it was your dad?"
He sees right through her. He knows exactly what she's doing, exactly how hard she's trying to push him away.
He won't let her. Not this time, and he decides to call her bluff. Would he go? If he got the call that his dad was dying - would he go?
What would he say?
"I think...I don't know," he says thoughtfully. "It's hard to say until you're there, I guess. I've spent twenty years telling myself I don't need a damn thing from him, y'know? That nothing he could say would make a difference, that he didn't deserve my forgiveness."
"Yeah," Jaz says hoarsely, her shoulders crumpling just the tiniest bit.
Dalton knows very little about Jaz's relationship with her father, aside from the fact that it no longer exists. He knows her childhood was difficult. Knows she doesn't speak to either of her parents, that she hasn't seen them in years.
But he doesn't know how it ended up that way.
"Thing is," he says slowly. "It's not about him. Forgiveness, or...those last words. It's about me. Maybe he doesn't deserve my forgiveness, but maybe I deserve to forgive him."
Jaz snorts. "You get that from Preach?"
Dalton doesn't laugh. "I don't want you to regret anything," he says again.
She shakes her head, and he expects another brush-off, another smartass remark. Instead, her face tightens, and she lets out a choked, painful breath.
"I can't," she whispers. "I just can't."
"Okay," he says gently, giving in. It's his job to support her decision, whatever it is, even if it scares him.
He puts an arm around her. She leans her head against his chest.
They sit in silence until the rest of the team has gone to sleep.
-o-o-
He's been in bed less than three hours, but he can't seem to keep his eyes closed, and so he wanders out to the kitchen.
And finds Jaz, sitting alone at the table, staring into space. She doesn't look up.
He pulls two bottles of water out of the fridge and joins her.
"Please talk to me," he whispers, when she doesn't say anything.
He thinks of the last time he'd said those words to her, hiding under the false bottom of a truck rocketing across Iran. She'd been barely holding herself together then.
It's less visible now, but he thinks she might be feeling the same way.
She cocks her head to the side, her eyes fixed on a speck of dust in the distance. He waits her out.
"I was thinking about Tehran," she says finally, and he freezes.
He hadn't been expecting that.
"They knocked me out, and then he...he looked at me," Jaz says, swallowing hard.
Dalton's afraid to move, afraid to breathe.
She hadn't mentioned this part in her debrief.
"He said…" Jaz stops, takes a slow, deep breath. She pauses for so long that Dalton doesn't think she's going to continue. "He said he'd examined my body."
A shiver runs down his spine, and he tries to keep himself calm. Steady.
"He asked about my knee," she whispers. "What kind of a person would do something like that, he said."
"Your knee?" Dalton manages, dumbly.
She doesn't look at him as she rolls up her flannel pajama bottoms, tilting her leg slightly to reveal a scar.
He's seen it before, he realizes, and never thought much about it. Assumed it was from a combat-related injury, or knee surgery, or…
Or her father?
He looks up at her face, but she's totally blank.
"What happened?" he manages, a harsh wave of anger crashing over him. He struggles to breathe through it, to stay focused and strong and stable.
For her.
She shakes her head, just barely, her eyes light years away. He wonders what she's seeing.
"It was a long time ago," she says, letting the leg of her pants drop back down. "All of it."
She finally turns to look at him, and he can't quite manage to wipe the horror off his face in time. "Don't," she says, shaking her head.
"Jaz," he breathes. He reaches towards her, but she stiffens, and he drops his hand before he can touch her.
"I've got nothing left to say to him," she says, to a point on the wall past his head. "He's been dead to me for a long time."
Dalton can't help staring at her knee. He wonders what other scars she's hiding, what other secrets she's buried. "Why didn't you tell me?" he whispers.
She shrugs. "I never told anyone," she says quietly. "Did you?"
The air around them is still, heavy. "Not when I was a kid," Dalton says, his eyes locked on hers. He'd once told her he could look into them and know exactly what she was thinking and he wishes now that it were true. "But I've talked about it. Since."
"It doesn't impact my life," Jaz says firmly. "It never has."
He nods, processing that. "You're not sleeping," he points out quietly.
"I'm still hyped up from the mission," she says, and he knows it's a lie, but he doesn't know how to call her on it.
They sit in silence for a long, long time.
"I'm gonna go for a run," she says when the sky outside finally begins to lighten.
She stands before he can say anything, is gone before he can find a way to make her stay.
-o-o-
He alerts the guys in the morning, because - well, they're a team. And he can't help thinking that this might blow up in all of their faces soon. He tells them not to push her on it, to let her come to them.
They all look skeptical about this plan.
He calls Patricia, tells her that Jaz doesn't want to go home. He asks her to keep him updated, and to keep them out of service, at least for now.
Amir makes breakfast. They do some physical training, go to the shooting range. Jaz says nothing, gives away nothing.
Dalton waits. And watches.
-o-o-
She wakes up screaming that night.
It's not completely out of the ordinary. They've all had their share of nightmares - Dalton perhaps more than his share - and they're used to helping each other through. Jaz, in particular, had struggled in the weeks after Tehran, and they'd taken turns rolling out of bed to make sure she was okay, to sit with her until it went away.
But this one feels different. To Adam, at least.
By the time he stumbles into her room, McG is already kneeling beside her bed, Preach and Amir watching from the doorway. She's totally hysterical, lost in a vicious dream that won't seem to let her go.
"Come on, Jaz," McG says gently, running his palm over her hair, trying to soothe her out of it. "Jaz, wake up, okay? You're safe, Jazzy."
She's curled up in a ball, like a small child - hiding, her face pressed to the pillow. She wails unintelligibly, jibberish spilling from her mouth.
"Jaz!" McG says more urgently, firmly gripping her shoulder. She stiffens, and her eyes fly open, panicked and desperate.
"Hey, hey, you're okay," McG says, smiling at her. "It's just a dream, you're okay."
Dalton watches from the doorway, afraid to get too close, afraid to crowd her.
"Just a dream," McG says again, and she nods, gulping down air.
But there's something in her eyes that makes Dalton think it wasn't just a dream.
-o-o-
Adam comes back from his morning workout to find Preach on the couch, waiting for him.
"What's wrong?" he asks, hyper-alert immediately.
Preach holds up the sat phone. "Patricia called," he says. "They're talking hours now, not days."
He wipes the sweat off his forehead with the sleeve of his t-shirt, blinking back the rapidly forming headache.
"She doesn't want to go."
"Hannah said they can chopper her to Istanbul today and get her on a commercial flight at 1700," Preach says. "She could be in New York by midnight."
"What do you want me to do here, Preach?" Adam sighs, annoyed.
It's not the logistics he's worried about.
He heads for the kitchen, aggressively rooting through the refrigerator.
Preach follows him. "She needs to go," he says quietly, firmly.
"Well, you try telling her that," Dalton says, shoving aside an expired container of milk, and nearly knocking over an unstable pile of carrots.
"It's you she'll listen to," Preach says patiently. "She's never gonna have any closure if she doesn't do this. She's never gonna find peace."
Adam wants to scream. "What do you want me to do, Preach?" he says again, through gritted teeth. "I can't force her to go. She doesn't want to go, she doesn't want to go, okay?"
"Adam…"
He slams the refrigerator door shut. "Her father was an abusive asshole, okay? She doesn't have to go talk to him, she doesn't need to say goodbye. She doesn't need to give him anything."
Preach is studying him with that look on his face, the one that makes Adam feel like he's reading his soul.
"Don't do that," he bites, stalking for the coffee machine.
He's expecting a fight - he's picking one, after all - but instead Preach says. "Okay."
Dalton whirls around. "Okay?"
Preach shrugs, and heads back for the couch.
"What, you're not going to give me a big speech on closure and forgiveness and the healing power of love?" Adam demands, following him out of the kitchen.
"You don't need me to tell you any of that," Preach says, settling back in with a newspaper. "You already know."
Adam can feel the anger draining out of him, can feel himself deflating like a balloon. He sinks onto the couch, burying his face in his hands.
"What am I supposed to do?" he breathes.
Preach pats his shoulder. "Just what you're doing. Just be there."
-o-o-
He's sitting on the couch that afternoon, trying and failing to edit a badly-written After Action Report, when she emerges from her room, and heads straight for him. She's wearing a baggy hoodie with the sleeves pulled over her hands, and all he can think is that she looks like a little kid.
He closes his laptop.
"When I was seven," she says haltingly, then shakes her head.
He holds out a hand, nodding his head toward the couch beside him. She sits down on the empty cushion.
She still can't manage to speak, and he holds his breath.
"Look, my dad couldn't stand me, okay?" she says bitterly. "He had a temper, and he was violent and I was afraid of him every single second of every day."
"He hit you?" Adam asks quietly.
"Yeah," she clips. "If my bed wasn't made the way he liked it or if I made noise while he was watching his show or if I got a 98 on a spelling test. Anything at all."
Dalton takes this in, trying not to let his mind conjure up a tiny Jaz, clutching a slightly less-than-perfect homework assignment.
"Did he drink?" he can't help asking.
"No," Jaz says, her eyes a million miles away. "No, he would do it stone-cold sober."
Adam thinks of his own father, of the Jekyll and Hyde transformation he'd go through after a few too many beers during the Steelers game or a little too much whiskey with his buddies on payday. He thinks of the way he'd apologize when he sobered up, of how he'd swear that he'd never meant to hurt them.
It had helped, he thinks. It had allowed him to justify his father's anger and violence, to know in advance when things would get bad. His dad wasn't in control, Adam had always told himself. He hadn't wanted to hurt them. It was the alcohol.
He wonders if it would have been better or worse for Jaz. If she'd have preferred the excuse of alcohol.
"What happened when you were seven?" he asks instead.
He doesn't want to know, not really. But he thinks she might need to tell him. To tell somebody.
Jaz's hands grip her thighs, like she's holding on. "I dropped dinner," she says, her voice so empty it punches Adam in the gut. "I was - my mom made dinner. Every night. That was her - that's what he expected of her. And that night - he was in a mood. Something at work, I don't know. I never knew."
She disappears for a moment, her eyes drifting. It scares him.
"She'd made his favorite," she says after an eternity. "Hashweh. Try to - I don't know. It's not like anything calmed him down or anything. But we were - we didn't eat with him. We just served him, while he ate. That was our role."
She shakes her head bitterly, a tiny glimpse of the Jaz he knows.
"My mom had gone to get him more juice," she says, her voice shaking. "He - waved for more hashweh. So I went to get it, and then - I don't know, something on TV made him mad. And he banged on the table."
Her voice gets smaller and smaller, and he can hear the scared little girl inside.
"And you dropped dinner," Adam finishes quietly.
"I dropped dinner," she whispers.
She lets out a trembling breath. "Um," she starts, then shakes her head. "He, uh - that was the angriest he'd ever been. I think. And he started hitting me, and screaming. Just screaming. He was so…"
She hunches over, breathing in and out. "He picked me up and threw me out the window," she whispers, so quietly he thinks he must have misheard her.
"What?" he manages, his throat tight.
"It was a ground floor apartment," she says, as if that explains anything.
Adam's heart is pounding. His head is spinning. He can't think, can't seem to get enough oxygen in. "He threw you out a window," he repeats, like he might be wrong, like he can change what he heard.
Like he can change what happened.
She sits up straight, focuses again on the wall. "Yeah."
He lets out a gasping, shaking breath, dangerously close to a sob. "Jaz."
She shakes her head, her whole body tensing, and he knows not to touch her. "My mom took me to the hospital," she says, and he can't get over how calm she is.
He wants to punch a wall. Wants to fly to New York and slide a knife across her father's throat and watch him choke to death on his own blood.
"It could have been a lot worse," Jaz says, and Adam has to bite his tongue to keep from screaming. "I had a concussion. A few broken ribs and a broken wrist. Some bad cuts." She gestures towards the scar she'd shown him on her knee. "Some of the glass cut pretty deep."
"What happened to him?" Adam manages, although he already knows the answer.
She shrugs. "We said it was an accident," she says distantly. "I don't think anyone even asked any questions."
Adam wants to ask a million. He wants to know if this was the worst thing that ever happened, or if this is just the only story she can bear to tell. He wants to know if her father ever apologized, if he ever expressed any remorse or regret. He wants to know if she has any good memories of her father, or if they're all laced with pain and terror.
He wants to know if she became who she is because of her father or in spite of him.
Instead he sits silently. Beside her. There.
-o-o-
Hours pass. The sun sets. Preach and McG return from sparring and hit the showers. Amir starts chopping vegetables for dinner.
Both Jaz and Dalton sit, frozen, on the couch.
No one bothers them.
"What would I even say to him?" Jaz says suddenly, and Dalton startles. "Sorry."
He waves her off, but the moment clarifies something for him. She's always had an uncanny ability to creep around unnoticed, to sneak up on him without a sound. He's marveled at her preternatural capacity for disappearing, for silence, for stealth.
Now he knows where she learned it. Why she learned it.
It makes him feel a little sick.
"I don't know," he says finally. "I think - I guess there probably isn't anything."
She nods. "Yeah," she whispers.
"I wish I could talk to him though," Adam says, the words taking both of them by surprise.
Jaz turns to him, eyes wide. "What do you mean?"
Shit. Dalton sighs, swallows hard.
"I would want him to know that he didn't win," he says with a shrug, avoiding her gaze. "That he didn't break you."
He's not sure what possesses him to keep talking, but the words tumble out unbidden. "I wish he could know how wrong he was about you. How amazing you are. And I want him to know how much he missed by...how he could have had you and he chose not to."
Jaz doesn't move, and he chances a look at her. There are tears sliding down her cheeks.
"Top," she whispers.
"To me that's the worst part," he says. He wants to reach over and wipe the tears away, but he restrains himself. "He was lucky enough to have you, and he didn't realize it."
Jaz chokes on a sob, and composes herself quickly.
She swipes her hands across her face, offers him a small smile. "Thanks," she whispers.
-o-o-
He's caught in a strange sort of dream - no plot, no characters, just flashes of confusing light, of rushing water, of unsettling feelings - when something shakes him out of it.
He looks frantically around his room. Steadies himself, listens for the sound of the sat phone, or the noise of an intruder.
Instead, he finds Jaz sitting on the edge of his bed, her form barely visible in the dim light from his half-open window.
"Jaz," he gasps. He can't make out her face, can't tell what's going on.
She rubs her thumb against his temple, and it's intimate and terrifying and magnetic and it's all he can do to keep from pulling her into his arms, from wrapping his whole body around her.
"Will you come with me?" she asks.
He doesn't hesitate.
"Of course."
-o-o-