I'm back! Didn't think I was going to make this multi-chapter, but then somebody mentioned how great the Jaz/Dalton content was in 1x11 and I have to agree. It's so, so good! (I'm seriously so weak for these two) So, I decided to make this a short little story of connected episode tags for episodes 1x10 to 1x13.
Thanks for all the support on this story so far, it really means a lot!
Enjoy!
-:-
Jaz lay on her back, staring up at the ceiling. She exhaled slowly, closing her eyes for a moment. It had been five days since the team rescued her from Iran. She hadn't been sleeping well since that first night when she'd mostly passed out from exhaustion. She kept finding herself waking up in the middle of the night, unable to fall back asleep. Today had been a little better. She'd checked her watch and it was close to dawn.
Running her tongue over her still healing lip, she opened her eyes and sat up. Crawling out of bed, she pulled on a pair of sweats and a hoodie, padding as quietly as she could into the kitchen. She wasn't even hungry, but she didn't want to lay in bed anymore. She wasn't going to be able to fall back asleep, especially with McG's snoring.
She sat down at the kitchen table, knowing that part of her restlessness was not being out in the field. They hadn't been called out for a mission since getting back from Tehran, which she supposed was nice for getting the rest she needed. But she was done resting. Medical had told her a week, and it hadn't been quite that long, but about the only thing that was bothering her was the fact that a few of her wounds were starting to itch as they healed. Other than that, she felt perfectly fine. She just wished D.C. would call with a mission. Then it would give her something to do, other than sitting around staring at the wall.
A few days ago, Dalton had offered to let her go home early, take some time for herself. I know it's only a few more weeks of this rotation, he'd said, but I know I could get Patricia to agree let you go early if you need time—
All due respect, she'd interrupted before he could finish that sentence, the one she hadn't wanted to hear, especially from Dalton. I'm staying.
He'd regarded her for a long moment, before nodding slowly. All right. Let me know if you change your mind.
And that had been the end of that discussion. Maybe she'd been a little defiant, but he'd looked at her with understanding. Jaz knew that if their situations were reversed, he certainly wouldn't be leaving the team. She wasn't going to either. She didn't want to go home, and more importantly, she didn't want to leave her team. Not after what they'd done for her.
"What're you doing up, Jaz? Can't sleep?" Preach said as he came shuffling into the kitchen, pulling her out of her thoughts.
"Sorry," she said quietly, ignoring his question about not being asleep. She was pretty sure Preach had been able to tell that last few days that she hadn't been sleeping well, but that didn't mean she had to admit it out loud. "I thought I was being quiet."
"You know," he responded, moving to the shelves in the kitchen, "when you have three daughters like I do, you tend to be a pretty light sleeper. Gotta be ready, willing, and able to slay monsters under the bed at the first creak of a floorboard."
She smiled a little at that, spinning in her chair to face him. He was bustling around, grabbing things off shelves. "What are you doing?"
"Making some of Grandma Carter's no-fail naptime tea." Ingredients in hand, Preach turned and gave her a look that confirmed Jaz's suspicions. She didn't know how he did it, but he definitely knew she hadn't been sleeping well. But he didn't elaborate, simply gave her a comforting smile and turned to make the tea.
In no time, they both had steaming mugs in hand. The first sip soothed her, releasing some tension she hadn't realized she'd been holding in. "That's actually really good," she said, smiling.
Then he brought up Top's offer to let her rotate home early, and she told him the same things she'd been telling herself. She didn't want to go home. She didn't want to return to her lonely apartment in the city. Didn't want to fulfill her obligation as a daughter by making her yearly visit to her parents. She didn't even want to think about being anywhere but on base.
"Yeah, well, if you're gonna stay, which warms my heart," McG said sleepily as he, too, came into the kitchen, "can you guys please be quiet? You're making a racket out here, I'm trying to sleep."
Jaz gave him an incredulous look. "That's rich, coming from you."
McGuire looked between her and Preach. "What do you mean?"
Jaz opened her mouth and imitated his loud, chainsaw snore. Preach started chuckling at her side, while McG tried to defend himself by saying he didn't snore. Soon enough, Amir had joined them, grumpily asking why they were all awake. McG and Amir continued their back and forth, then Preach interjected by explaining that it would take a lot more than a little bit of noise to wake Dalton up. Jaz just sat back and watched, nearly forgetting how tired she was.
This. This is why she didn't want to go home. Because her family was here.
-:-
Dalton had been dreading this conversation ever since they got the mission call from D.C. He knew how restless Jaz had been since getting back from Iran, how badly she wanted to get back out in the field. He was the same way. He hated bedrest, hated waiting around. But she hadn't been cleared yet, and he didn't have a choice.
She was in the equipment cage, screwing the suppressor onto her rifle. Dalton stepped up next to her, debating how to breach the topic. As it turned out, he didn't have to. Jaz could sense what he was thinking.
She stopped what she was doing and turned to him, a defiant glint in her eyes. "You cannot be serious."
"The brass hasn't cleared you for duty yet," Dalton told her plainly.
Jaz lifted her head a little higher. "The brass hasn't, or you haven't?"
Any other circumstance and Dalton might have smiled. She was so full of fire, wasn't afraid to stand her ground. He admired that about her, but right now, he had to be her commander.
"If you're trying to convince me that you're squared away by running your mouth, you're not helping your argument," he shot back.
Jaz set her jaw, taking her equipment bag and tossing it on the ground, before perching on the silver table. Dalton could feel the rest of the team watching them, but he kept his eyes on Jaz, watching her lift a hand to touch her lip where it was still healing. She wasn't looking at him.
"Look," he said more calmly, "do I want you to come with us? Of course I do. But that's why we've got protocols in place, so that guys like me aren't making decisions that we're not qualified to make. Now, I put you in harm's way and you're not ready, something happens to you," he paused, taking a breath, and Jaz finally turned her head to look at him. "I'd never forgive myself."
If she was surprised by his statement, she didn't show it. Still, it was the truth. Every day since from returning to Iran he'd thought about the fact that they'd almost left her there. If he hadn't come up with a plan, she would've died there. He could barely sleep, because he kept dreaming about it, about seeing her get taken, kept waking up in the middle of the night with a sick feeling twisting in his gut. He knew Jaz hadn't been sleeping well either, because he heard her get up in the middle of the night, but he hadn't yet gotten the courage to go and talk to her in those quiet hours of the night.
Those were the hours where he didn't trust himself not to tell her how much he hated himself for almost leaving her there.
Jaz exhaled sharply, and Dalton could see her trying to come up with an excuse to get him to let her come.
"What?" he prompted, tone sharp.
She stared him down for a moment longer, before her shoulders dropped just so in defeat. "For the record," she said, voice hard, "this blows."
She hopped down off the table and walked quickly out of the cage, not looking back. Dalton sighed. He knew she wouldn't be pissed forever, but it still hurt knowing that he couldn't take her with them.
-:-
"Did they hurt you?"
The question didn't really surprise Jaz. She was wondering when Xander would get around to asking her something like that. And earlier…earlier she probably would've given him some snarky response and closed herself off again. But she liked Xander. At first she'd been annoyed that they'd sent a shrink at all, but she'd gotten over it. He was there to make sure she was fit for duty, but he hadn't been patronizing about it, for which she was grateful. He also hadn't treated her differently because she was a woman.
But she was a woman, so he still asked the question. The wounds on her face were still healing, so while she knew he was asking if they'd hurt her more seriously, she also knew that he was asking if they'd hurt her, touched her inappropriately. She was quiet. She wanted to give him an answer. No. It was one word. Aside from Arthur's cold hands touching her from time to time, making her skin crawl, and his threats to do more, they hadn't hurt her, not in that way. But still, she couldn't seem to open her mouth to speak.
"I read the debrief," Xander said. "I'm not asking a piece of paper, I'm asking you."
Jaz still didn't say anything, just focused on the videogame on the tv, her hands barely registering the control in her hands.
"I'm a survivor, Jaz," Xander continued. "I know—I know no matter how well you got through it, there's something that got you. Maybe not then, maybe it's now. But the thing is, it's better to say it out loud now to me, then let it haunt you."
Jaz paused the game, setting the controller down on the table next to her. She swallowed, looking over at Xander.
"So?" he prompted gently. "What is it that's haunting you?"
Jaz took a breath. She thought of the doctored photos Arthur had shown her, how she'd known they were fake, but still feared the outcome they showed. She couldn't stand to lose her team. Dalton had told her when they'd gotten back that she'd been worth the risk, and she'd been too tired at the time to question him on the matter. But had she been worth the risk? Hussein was dead, and the rest of her team could have been dragged down with him. All because they took the risk to get her back.
"I'm terrified that I could lose them," she admitted quietly, not looking directly at Xander. She swallowed, resting her hands on her knees, folding her hands together. There were still bruises around her wrists from the cuffs. She could still so easily picture the blood that dripped from her fingertips after they sliced into her with that knife. But that wasn't what really bothered her about all of this.
"You know, being grabbed, being tortured," she exhaled, "I can handle that. My dad hated me from the second I was born a girl. But, um…" Jaz took a shaky breath, thinking of the utter relief that had washed over her when Dalton, McG, and the others appeared, pulling her from the van that would have delivered her to certain death. "When my guys came and rescued me—"
She broke off, shifting her gaze away from Xander. There was the slightest burning of tears in her eyes, but she blinked, willing them away.
"That was the first time anyone came to help you. First time in your whole life," Xander guessed. Deduced, rather.
Jaz took another breath, whispered, "Yep."
-:-
After the rest of the guys had wandered off to make bets and play nine-ball, Jaz stood up from her chair and went to sit next to Dalton on the bench of the picnic table. They were quiet for a little while, just sipping on their beers, enjoying the silence.
"Xander's good people, yeah?" Dalton asked finally, giving her a knowing look.
Jaz smiled. She should've known Dalton was going to keep tabs on her while they'd been gone in Columbia. She might have been annoyed, but she understood. "You know him?"
He turned his head in her direction, giving her a small smile. "We're well acquainted." He fell silent, staring back at the fire in front of him.
Then, Dalton spoke again, "You know what, in our line of work…" he paused, ran a hand across the back of his head like he did when he was thinking about what to say, how to phrase something. "I think experience…it comes at a pretty steep cost."
He wasn't looking at her. Dalton didn't often talk about himself. He was a lot like her in that he wouldn't open up until he wanted to. But he was opening up now, so Jaz just waited patiently for him to continue.
"I was in Fallujah in the fall of '04." Dalton rubbed on his ear, still not looking at her. Still, Jaz waited. She felt like she was holding her breath, anticipating and dreading all at once what he had to say next. "And the op tempo was so high. And we couldn't even keep track of the numbers that we were racking up. By that time, I mean, I had spilled so much blood…you get a taste for it, you know?"
Dalton looked at her, and she was caught a little off guard. There was something in his face that she so rarely saw, a hint of sadness and vulnerability that she wasn't used to seeing in him. Because he was their captain, and he had to lead by example. He had to be strong for the rest of them. The faint glimmer of tears in his eyes made her look towards the ground.
"My CSM had to pull me off of some asshole whose throat I'd just slit," Dalton continued, voice a little quieter, "cause he killed one of my friends."
Jaz knew how he felt. She could feel all the blood on her hands from all the people she'd killed. She could see Elijah's blood spray as she caught his falling body. Could see it coating her hands and welling up between her fingers as she desperately tried to staunch the flow, even as his eyes went dim.
She could see Dalton, bruised and bloody and beaten in that fake photo. Even if the picture hadn't been real, it didn't mean that she couldn't see something like that happening someday. It didn't mean that it didn't haunt her regardless, kept her from sleeping well.
Dalton cleared his throat next to her, continuing. "And it wasn't enough that I'd killed him. You know I wanted to take his head," Dalton looked at her again, and what she saw in his eyes she felt all the way down in her bones. It struck her then how similar they were. That what haunted him was similar to what haunted her, "and I wanted to hang it on a wall, over my rack. I lost sight of what made me better than them."
He was quiet for another moment, and she saw him rub at the corner of his eye. "I don't—I don't know if, um…if we have to have a dark side to do what we do, Jaz. But I know that I met mine. And, uh,…" he shook his head, as if trying to banish the ghosts of memories from his mind. "No matter what I do…that guy never goes away."
Dalton looked at her again and she swallowed, tipping her head to look back at the stars. She mulled over what he'd said, and everything she'd been thinking since they got her out. She was grateful, of course. There weren't words to convey just how glad she was that her team had come back for her. You were worth the risk. That's what Dalton had told her when they'd gotten back on base. That first night, her gratitude and those words were all she could think about, all she could feel. But the following nights she hadn't been able to sleep. She'd just kept thinking about how much they'd risked to get her out, about the gunfire around the truck, and Hussein sacrificing himself. No one should have died. It was her job to go into dangerous situations, and if she didn't make it out, that was okay. It's what she signed up for.
She felt better after having talked to Xander. It felt good to voice her fears to someone, but she knew she should tell someone else. She should tell Dalton. Because that part of her that was scared to lose him and the others, that part of her was angry too. Angry at herself because it was her life they'd been trying to save. Angry at her team for going back in to save her. It was stupid. Knowing Dalton, he would've done the same for any one of them, but she was still struggling with it. She didn't think anyone would miss her if she was gone. And yet they'd done everything in their power to get her out.
Her eyes started stinging, and she blinked rapidly, trying to extinguish the tears. She inhaled, exhaled slowly through her mouth. She looked at Dalton. He was staring up at the sky as she had been. He'd set his beer on the table and had his arms folded across his chest. She looked away again, up at the night sky, not wanting to look at him when she asked the question that had been burning beneath the depths of her gratitude. "Why did you come and get me?"
She could feel Dalton's eyes on her. "Jaz."
She swore she could count the beats of her heart. Her eyes burned again, and she willed herself not to cry, not here, not now.
"Jaz, look at me." It wasn't so much an order as it was a request.
Slowly, Jaz tipped her head down and looked at her captain. There was a crease of confusion between his brows, a hint of that same vulnerability from earlier shadowed in his eyes. He looked at a loss for words.
"Why risk it?" she asked, gripping her beer bottle in her hands.
"You're kidding right?" His brow furrowed. "Jaz—"
"You said it yourself," she interrupted, snapping a little more than she'd intended. "It was a risky plan. It could've gone wrong in a million different ways. And plan or not, I'm sure Campbell asked you to leave. That's protocol. I knew the risk when I took the mission to kill Jarif, so why did you guys come after me? Hussein is dead, and you could be too, and—"
"Jaz, stop" he said firmly, reaching forward to grasp her wrist gently. He scanned her face, then looked down to where his hand was around her wrist. With the sleeves of her jacket she couldn't feel his skin against her own, but somehow she knew that it would be warm, his hand calloused like her own. He withdrew his hand, and Jaz finally set her beer bottle down.
Dalton took a breath, looking at her directly. "Look, you're right. Patricia told us to leave. She said we were out of options, and that she couldn't risk the rest of us being there any longer. But don't you see, Jaz? That's the point. There was no other option. No alternative other than getting you out. You're a part of this team, and I meant it when I said you were worth the risk. And Director Campbell must've thought so, too, because I couldn't have done it without her help."
Jaz swallowed, chest tight. She knew that her eyes were shining with tears, but she didn't care anymore. "You guys could've died."
Dalton nodded slowly. "Yep. But that's the job." He paused, twisted his mouth like he was considering what to say next. "What I said earlier, about not being able to forgive myself if something happened to you…I meant that. I couldn't stand the thought of leaving you there to die without at least trying to get you out. That dark part of myself—" He swallowed, his throat bobbing with the movement. "I didn't want to know what kind of person I would turn into if I didn't at least try."
That was something Jaz could understand. She was terrified of what she would do, who she would become if something ever happened to her team. Losing Elijah was bad enough. She shut herself off for weeks, months. She'd been at everyone's throats when it was announced they'd be getting a new guy. Through all of that, though, she'd somehow grown closer to this team. They hadn't turned her away, hadn't abandoned her. Not then, not now. They were her family, and losing them scared the shit out of her.
But they were here now, and that was all that mattered. Dalton had gotten her out. She was sure she'd been dead, that she would never see a night sky like this one again, but here she was. She exhaled, nodding at Dalton. "I understand." She licked her lips. "And I'm sorry for snapping earlier, for questioning your orders about me staying behind."
Dalton smiled a little at that. "It's okay."
And that was all she needed to hear. That it was going to be okay. She took a deep breath and smiled back, before tipping her head back once more to look at the stars. "So, which one is Cassiopeia, again?"
She swore she could see Dalton grin out of the corner of her eye. He settled in too, and pointed up at the sky, telling her the stories of the stars for a long time. By the time Jaz made it to bed that night, it was the best she'd slept in days.