Author's Note: Firstly, thank you so much to those who have reviewed and nudged and kicked :) And I am sorry this one has taken a bit to get posted, the muse did have a tantrum because it thought I was playing favourites, but is now behaving.

Which leads me to my second point - there is more! I promise... it's written. It will be posted. There just needed to be... context first.

Stick with me here :)

Tx


Prometheus Chapter 7


His name was Jackson Tait. He was young, handsome, and a private in the US marine core. He had survived four tours of Iraq and Afghanistan, only to be taken out by a SUV whose driver didn't understand traffic signals.

Tait had already crashed in the ambulance twice on the way to Northwestern, and was barely clinging to life when he was wheeled into surgery - on Dr Isles' rotation. Thus she became his surgeon.

She had managed to stop the bleeding, removed his spleen, a kidney, sutured closed a perforation of his stomach, and set the fractures in his legs enough for a proper orthopaedic surgeon to screw them together properly at a later date. She had removed a piece of his skull to allow the brain extra room to swell without damaging it further. She was also the one to put it back. She couldn't do much about the fractured ribs - but they had healed by the time he had emerged from his coma, 4 weeks later. In that time she had siphoned 12 pints of someone else's blood into his body to keep him alive.

The first time he had finally regained consciousness, the feeling of relief in the medical team overseeing his progress was palpable. His family was crying with joy. Even the Doctor, who prided herself on an outward projection of professional distance, allowed herself a rare moment of unbridled enthusiasm.

Until he tore a hole in his trachea trying to escape the unseen enemy at the end of his bed.

It took another 2 hours in emergency surgery to repair the damage.

The second time, he ripped the arterial IV line out of his groin. She fixed that too, adding another 2 pints of blood. And thus when it became clear that the perhaps for this young man regaining consciousness was almost as dangerous as the coma he was recovering from, they had decided to take the step of sedating him while they scrambled to locate a psychiatrist qualified enough to ease him away from his waking nightmare. As his surgeon, Dr Isles had been dragged in too - and taught some basic principles of how to manage a minefield of stimuli, reactions and fears.

And he became her first real experience of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Naturally she researched it, like she did all of her unknowns. It was not like Maura to sit back and wait for information, for experience to come to her. No, if she was going to be the best, she needed to know. She needed to know it all.

She learned the nuances, the habits, the peculiarities of behaviour that might indicate the presence of something more than simple, logical decision-making. She became aware of potential signs that would suggest something else was driving the person's reactive brain… the angry gremlin hogging the steering wheel. Importantly she learned the possible approaches to individuals in those situations, and while it by no means made her an expert, it certainly improved her ability to treat her future patients.

They had brought Jackson back eventually – the team of them; over four agonizing months. For Dr Isles, while she kept her external façade intact, she found it easy to care, easy to feel remorse for him and anger for his situation and channel that emotion deep into the way in which she treated him... The time and energy she invested ensuring he was cared for appropriately.

And when Maura had visited him one afternoon soon after his release from hospital only to find him with his gun in his mouth, crying for all the things he couldn't feel, she poured everything she had left into that one moment, that single moment where the movement of only a millimetre could have ended him.

It didn't. He won. And he crawled back to life, her doing her best to shine a torch bright enough for him to see.

After all, he was a certified war hero. And they were still in contact to this day.


"Rizzoli."

The woman had quieted, still in her awkward position on the floor, pressed as if she were trying to fold herself into the space where the wall ended and floor began. The Doctor watched the erratic rise and fall of her chest, fast like in panic, eyes half-lidded, staring at the ceiling.

"Rizzoli, I need to look at your stitches."

Her left hand was still wrapped around her shin, firmly but without so much pressure as to cause discomfort.

With Korsak gone, the Doctor felt more at ease to approach the woman the way she needed to, without judgement or interruption. Her right hand closed around the medical case.

"I'm going to move now." She said. "I'm going to move closer and I'm going to move my hand – away from your leg now. Okay?"

She released the dark-haired woman's shin, while at the same time shuffling forward on the concrete, closer to where she had better access to the area she needed to see. She had concerns – real concerns – about the level of damage since she had last seen the wounds. They shouldn't have developed the way they did. The fact there was deterioration at all was alarming in itself.

But if her assessment was correct… Which she had every reason to believe it was, then Korsak's explanation - regardless of her dislike of the way he gave it - was entirely plausible.

Pulling herself level with the woman's ribcage Maura squinted up at the lights above her then took a moment to observe the shape and location of her shadow over Rizzoli's body. She knew that if the light was shining directly behind her, from anyone looking up from the floor her features would be indistinguishable; which for a person in Rizzoli's state and already half-sedated could appear… threatening.

And despite her obvious desire to keep her patient as calm as possible for treatments' sake, Maura couldn't help remembering what had happened the last time the woman felt threatened by her.

"Okay Rizzoli." She said, "I'm going to put my hand on your arm, so you know where I am."

The instant her fingers connected with the woman's upper arm she flexed violently, the rattling of her cuffs clearly audible behind her back. Her eyes flew open and now Maura was close enough to see her pupils attempting to dilate, still staring upward at the ceiling. Her teeth clenched and her rapid breaths hissed out between them.

The Doctor paused, taking in the sight, feeling the quivering of the arm under her hand, held in absolute tension.

She opened her mouth, then closed it again, silent. The comfort on the tip of her tongue – the one designed to soothe, to calm frayed nerves and bid her to relax just wouldn't come out. It was too tangled up in her conscience, trapped in the mud of the reality that this prisoner was no war hero, no victim… this woman suffered PTSD from either the act of murdering two people, or the isolation faced as a reasonable consequence of that act.

The feeling of values colliding with morals sent acrid chills up her spine and a heavy uneasiness settled in her stomach, as Maura felt for the umpteenth time in less than 24 hours how mightily out of her league she was.

She let a long sigh out of her nose. "I need to see these stitches." She moved her hand so that it was once again hovering above the edge of the white t-shirt. "I'm going to pull this up, but only half way, so I can look. Okay?"

No change. She didn't move, she didn't relax, she didn't look anywhere.

"Okay.." She answered the silence, shaking her head. "Let's get this over with, shall we?"

She pulled the shirt upward in one motion.

A pained gasp echoed through the entire cell, bouncing across walls and ceilings and floors and corners and right into Maura's ears. She felt herself surrounded by it… and the panic in the sound drew her eyes straight to the woman's face.

Dark, thinly-set eyebrows rose up in the middle of her brow, creasing her entire forehead in fear. Her lips trembled and closed, in precise time with her eyes, her breathing increased in pace and before Maura could remove her hand, the soft sound of a whimper escaped her mouth.

Maura's heart immediately constricted in her chest.

"Hey…no, Hey-" She whispered, instinctively stroking her thumb once over the orange-clad arm, laying her other hand gently on her stomach. "It's okay… I won't hurt you it's-"

The image of Jackson Tait flashed before her eyes.

No. Not a war hero.

She stopped, again tumbling over her words until they came to a complete stop, and turned away for a moment to gather herself.

"Damnit.." She hissed angrily, though whether it was directed at herself or the woman, she wasn't sure. "Damnit.." She repeated again, and with a frustrated growl she let go of the woman's arm, and reached behind her into the medical case. Her fingers closed around the item she needed without her even having to look.

The needle flashed once in the light before she slowly slid it through the material into soft flesh.

Korsak had been correct about that, too.

"This will make it easier…" She murmured, the awful weight in the pit of her stomach growing. "For both of us."